On June 12, 1987, President Reagan stood in front of the famous German landmark built in the late 1700's, the Brandenburg Gate, and boldly stated, “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
November 9, 2009 will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, arguably one of the most symbolic events representing freedom since World War II.
On the afternoon of August 12, 1961 at 4 p.m., Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader, signed the commands to close the border. The following Sunday at midnight the army, police and the "Kampfgruppen" began to bolt the city. The wall was built and separated the city into two halves for more than 28 years.
City streets, the railway and the S-Bahn (city railway) were divided, stations of the U-Bahn (underground railway) were closed, even cemeteries were divided. The East Germans were not allowed to travel to the West until 1989.
There have been celebrations throughout the summer marking the fall of the Iron Curtain and the demise communism in Eastern Europe. The "Iron Curtain" is a term used to describe the boundary that separated the Warsaw Pact countries from the NATO countries from about 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The Iron Curtain was both a physical and an ideological division that represented the way Europe was viewed after World War II. To the east of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were not free and connected to or influenced by the former Soviet Union. This included part of Germany (East Germany), Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania (until 1960 when it aligned with China). While Yugoslavia was Communist politically it was not considered to be a part of the Eastern Bloc or behind the Iron Curtain.
1989 was one of the most significant years in European history since World War II. Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and East Germany became free to determine their own futures after years of Communist rule. This past summer on June 27, 2009, in Budapest, the presidents of Germany, Austria, Finland, Slovenia, and Switzerland, as well as high-ranking officials from Poland, Britain, and more than 20 other countries, participated in a commemorative session at the Hungarian Parliament and a gala event at the Hungarian State Opera House. Twenty years earlier, the then-foreign ministers of Hungary, Gyula Horn, and Austria, Alois Mock, cut through barbed wire on the border between the two countries, putting a symbolic end to a physical and psychological boundary. Hungary had begun to dismantle the Iron Curtain nearly two months earlier, on May 2, 1989 - partly because border guards said it was in such poor condition that even small animals were setting off false alarms along the electrified fence. Pictures of the event were published around the world and inspired tens of thousands of East Germans to leave their country, find temporary refuge in Hungary, Poland, or Czechoslovakia and wait for an opportunity to travel to West Germany. By the end of the summer, thousands of East German “tourists’’ were living in tents on the grounds of the West German Embassy in Budapest and in several other locations around the city, including church yards and the site of a communist youth camp. After allowing some of the “Ossies’’ to leave for West Germany via Austria in August and then some more a few weeks later, Hungary finally decided to let all East Germans out from Sept. 11, 1989. There were mass demonstrations against the government and the system from September until November 1989 culminating in the opening of the Wall the evening of November 9, 2009.
News reports have stated that President Obama does not have time to commemorate the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
Dennis Jones resides in Orange County, California with his wife and two children and has made his living as Chief Financial Officer in the Restaurant Industry for the past 30 years. He received his MBA from Long Beach State University and has a BS degree in Finance from the same institution.
