(ANSA-AP) - BERLIN, NOVEMBER 9 - Germany marked the 30th
anniversary Saturday of the opening of the Berlin Wall, a
pivotal moment in the events that brought down Communism in
eastern Europe. Leaders from Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia
and the Czech Republic attended a ceremony at Bernauer Strasse
where one of the last parts of the Berlin Wall remains &mdash
before placing roses in gaps in the once-fearsome barrier that
divided the city for 28 years.
Axel Klausmeier, head of the Berlin Wall memorial site,
recalled the images of delirious Berliners from East and West
crying tears of joy as they hugged each other on the evening of
Nov. 9, 1989. Klausmeier paid tribute to the peaceful protesters
in East Germany and neighboring Warsaw Pact countries who took
to the streets demanding freedom and democracy, and to
then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of reforms. The
protests and a stream of people fleeing East Germany piled
pressure on the country's Communist government to open its
borders to the West and ultimately end the nation's post-war
divisi on. Thirty years on, Germany has become the most powerful
economic and political force on the continent, but there remain
deep misgivings among some in the country about how the
transition from socialism to capitalism was managed.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged this in a recent
interview with daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, saying that "with
some things, where one might have thought that East and West
would have aligned, one can see today that it might rather take
half a century or more." Speaking at a memorial service in a
small chapel near where the Wall once stood, Merkel commemorated
those who were killed or imprisoned for trying to flee from East
to West Germany and ins isted that the fight for freedom
worldwide isn't over. "The Berlin Wall, ladies and gentlemen, is
history and it teaches us: No wall that keeps people out and
restricts freedom is so high or so wide that it can't be broken
down," she said. Merkel also recalled that Nov. 9 remains a
fraught date in German history, as it also marks the anniversary
of the so-called Night of Broken Glass, an anti-Jewish pogrom in
1938 that foresh adowed the Nazi's Holocaust. Light
installations, concerts and public debates were planned
throughout the city and other parts of Germany to mark the fall
of the Wall, including a concert at Berlin's iconic Brandenburg
Gate. (ANSA-AP).
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