REMEMBERING THE WALL

Last Saturday (13th August) was the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall,it passed, outside of Germany, largely unnoticed. Berlin City resident and German political leaders marked the vent with a memorial service and a minute of silence in honour of those who died trying to escape across the wall into the West. After the reunification of Germany, pretty understandably most of the 160-km (100-mile) Wall which encircled West Berlin (which survived as a free enclave deep in the heart of Communist East Germany) was rapidly knocked down in the euphoria of 1989. There were only a few remnants of the 3.6-metre-high Wall left when Germany reunited by the autumn of 1990.

Many tourists come to Berlin each year and search mostly in vain for traces of the Wall, save for the parts that the city authorities have re-erected and restored. New buildings have gone up on many parts of the former "death strip" and streets and tram lines have been reconnected making it hard to tell where the barrier once stood. The ceremony on Saturday was held at an 800-metre-long piece of the Wall complex on Bernauer Strasse that has been rebuilt, but, was once the scene of some dramatic escapes after the Wall was finished.

What price freedom?

People jumped from upper storey windows in buildings on the east side of the Wall to the street on the west. The windows were soon sealed off and the buildings were later demolished.The mind is certainly concentrated when you remember that the last person killed trying to escape to freedom was shot by border guards in June 1989, and the wall ceased to function in November of the same year. All in all there were around some 5,000 successful escapes to West Berlin, and no doubt many failed escape attempts. There is an on-going argument about how many people died trying to escape to freedom - according to the Center for Contemporary Historical Research (ZZF) in Potsdam there were 136 confirmed deaths.

I might be child of the 'Cold War' but have no nostalgia for it or the grim certainties of the Cold War era. I, not doubt like many others, am more than happy to have seen the demise of the Berlin Wall, East Germany and the Communist block and Soviet Union. The democratic revolutions and the changes that swept Middle and Eastern Europe in the late 1980's and the 1990's have made Europe a far better and freer place for most of us - but there is still room for improvement. It is however, important that we remember the wall and the grim years of totalitarian oppression in the East and also those who resisted the tyranny and paid the price with imprisonment, wrecked lives and cruel treatment at the hands of the Communist authorities.