Opinion: 30 Years After The Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall stood for 28 years. Today, Nov. 9, marks the 30th anniversary of when it began to come down.
It may be hard to imagine, a generation later, what a momentous event that was and why the sight of ordinary citizens, chipping away by hand and hammer at that edifice of cruelty, lifted so many hopes around the world.
The Berlin Wall went up almost overnight in 1961, after more than 2.5 million East Germans had fled to the West for freedom and opportunity. The wall was dozens of miles of concrete, barbed wire and electrified fences, overseen by watchtowers, topped with harsh searchlights, grim guards and pointed weapons.
The Berlin Wall made the Iron Curtain visible. It dramatized some of the differences between East and West in sharp, concrete terms.
The citizens in Western democracies, on one side of the wall, had elections, a free press and free travel. Those on the eastern side, in the communist bloc, were confined by a long wall, barbed wire and a vast network of secret police. Scores of people died between 1961 and 1989, trying to get over that wall.