Ian
priscilla 1Fall of the Berlin Wall
November 30th 2009 01:28
November 9th, 2009 marked the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down. Built with barbed wire and concrete in August of 1961 by the Communist East, The Berlin Wall, stretching for about 30 miles, was a Cold War symbol which separated East and West Berlin, preventing people from leaving East Germany. It is believed that least 938 people – 255 in Berlin alone – died, shot by East German border guards, attempting to flee to West Berlin or West Germany. It stood for 28 years as a division between the Soviets and the Allies. The wall was torn down after Communism collapsed in 1989. During the summer of 1989, tens of thousands of East Germans fled the communist regime. The photos below show the initial building of the Wall in 1961, the fall of the Wall in 1989 and how the sections of the Wall look today including comparisons of how Berlin looked before and after the wall was torn down. The images and information sourced from the Denver Post. Read the full article here.
An East German soldier of the border guard patrols along the barbed wire fence between the French and Soviet sector in the Schoenholz district in Berlin, Germany, September 25, 1961. A family, in the background, is forced to leave their home close to the sector's border and loads their belongings onto a truck.
West Berliners at right watch East German construction workers erect a wall across Wildenbruchstrasse and Heidelbergerstrasse in West Berlin in August 1961.
A refugee from the German Democratic Republic (DDR) is seen during his attempt to escape from the East German part of Berlin to West Berlin by climbing over the Berlin Wall on October 16, 1961.
Picture taken on November 11, 1989 shows west Berliners gathering in front of the Berlin Wall as they watch people trying to demolish a section of the wall in order to open a new crossing point between East and West Berlin, near the Potsdamer Square in Berlin. During the summer of 1989, tens of thousands of East Germans fled their oppressive communist regime to a new life of freedom in the west.
View of a remaining section of the Berlin wall (1961-1989) taken on November 3, 2008, between the Bundespresse-Konferenz building and the Marie-Elisabeth-Lueders-Haus (background) parliament annex near the river Spree in the heart of Berlin.
Photo taken Oct. 31, 2009 at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin shows a photo of U.S. President Ronald Reagan acknowledging the crowd after his speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin, where he said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! ", on June 12, 1987.
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