Sunday, November 10, 2019

BERLIN WALL AND CHECK POINT CHARLIE

A study group of US academics was in Berlin to experience the division happening in Europe at the time. As a part of the team I was being shepherded about by guards. One stopping point was Check Point Charlie.

The experience involved viewing barbed wire, guard dogs,
binoculars, machine guns, GDR soldiers, gates and a profoundly 
ominous sensation that we could be dead if any of us tried to breach the border. This was part of the Berlin Wall, marking a physical and ideological barrier first built in 1961 and taken down in 1989.  The thirtieth anniversary of the end of The Wall was on November 9, 2019, last week.

 I am reminded that tensions in the world are easily spoken of these days.

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