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History Of Berlin Wall - Amazing Documentary TV | David S. Mitchell | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: History Of Berlin Wall - Amazing Documentary TV
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Summary
Core Theme
The Berlin Wall, a physical manifestation of the Cold War's ideological divide, served as a brutal barrier for 28 years, imprisoning over a million people and resulting in hundreds of deaths, before its eventual fall symbolized the end of an era.
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[Music]
have you ever dreamed of exploring
another world
could you witness something
boundaries or reach for your greatest
hope the experience of every generation is
yours on the History Channel where the
alive it was the dividing line for a
city a continent and a way of life it
was the Iron Curtain made of concrete a
96m barrier that imprisoned over a
million people for 28 years at least 239
people died trying to get over under
around and through it now the Berlin
Wall on Modern marbles [Music]
[Music]
a scant decade and a half after its fall
there's not much left of the notorious Berlin
Wall the barrier that once split the
world is now A Relic innocuous
decomposing overrun with bushes and
weeds guard towers that represented a
bullet in the back to anyone trying to
climb over the wall today stand quietly
parks the longest surviving stretch of
the wall a 4200 ft run known as the East
Side Gallery is more noted today for its
past but in its time the Berlin Wall
stood as the most menacing implacable
spookily evocative piece of
this was the central for line of the
Cold War the dividing line between East
and West communism and capitalism the
two dominant and irreconcilable systems
of our
time these were tectonic plates they
were moving towards each other they were
rubbing against each other in a way
which is very difficult to comprehend it
wasn't a matter of moving from one
country to the next it was a matter of
moving from one street corner to the
next and you move from one ideology to
the next here is the world ends here for
capitalism a better socialist society
starts here I was convinced of
it ideology aside the Berlin Wall was
also a Monumental if bizarre feat of
Construction and
design a 96 m double barrier complete
with hundreds of watchtowers and a
horrific death strip that aimed at
nothing less than the absolute division
of a major European
Capital it was a poor country trying to
construct the pyramids in the middle of a
a
city and they did it slightly on the
cheap because they had to they they
didn't have any alternative but even so
they did a hell of a job in making it
very very difficult to get out of very difficult
indeed the roots in the desperate logic
of the Wall go back to the end of World
War II and the unraveling of relations
between former
allies at War's end Germany was divided
into four zones one each for the United
States Britain France and the Soviet
Union the capital city of Berlin lay 110
mil inside the Soviet zone and it too
was divided in four one sector for each
of the
Allies the Soviets who took Berlin after
weeks of fierce fighting laid claim to
the largest sector East Berlin which
occupied about 40% of the city and
contained 1.1 million inhabitants the US
Britain and France had control over West
Berlin and its 2.2 million
citizens the 200-year-old Brandenburg
gate was one of the few structures to
survive the war it stood at the dividing
line between the Soviet and Allied
postwar Berlin was a wasteland and
refugees poured from the East into the
west where reconstruction fueled by the
Marshall Plan was
dramatic to staunch the flow the Soviets
imposed a land blockade around West
Berlin in
1948 designed to starve the Allies out
and bring the entire city under Soviet
control it was foiled in dramatic
fashion by an American Airlift non-stop
sorties one every 2 minutes 24 hours a
day supplied all the needs of the city
for 11
months the Soviets finally lifted the
1949 by now the former allies were
bitterly at odds and yet despite
political differences the border between
East and West Berlin was surprisingly
open and free the 800-year-old city
shared a common infrastructure
everything from mail delivery to Subways
was jointly operated and some 60,000
East berliners worked on the west
side that was the real problem in Berlin
that it was an open City and people
could be spot checked by the police but
they couldn't really get a handle on
people crossing between the two halves
of the city over the next decade the
refugee problem worsened East Germany
was losing over 100,000 people a year
3/4 of them through Berlin
and Soviet Premier Nikita kusov was
renewing demands for Allied troops to
leave the
West the regime finds out in 1958 that
they're actually losing more doctors in
a year than they can actually train in a
year so they're beginning to go
backwards in 1961 when East Germany was
starting literally to melt away to the
West because the West Was prosperous the
East German government examined the
options and there was only one option
and that was to build a wall to stop
them going there were nothing El it could
do and yet what happened at midnight
August 13th 1961 caught everyone by
surprise in the history of the planet no
one had ever thought of trying to
forcibly divide a city the size of
Philadelphia into two with a
war there was a huge CIA presence in
West Berlin looking for what the East
German regime would have to do to
staunch the flow of the
refugees They concluded that bisecting
the city was impossible this was not an
option to take an
oldfashioned intertwined unified
European capital city that's been there
for a thousand years and split it down
all boundary lines can't be done code
named Wall of China by the East Germans
the top secret operation aimed to
establish a 27m barrier between East and
West Berlin and a 69m barrier between
West Berlin and East Germany
foreigners would still be allowed across
the border through a handful of
checkpoints but east Germans especially
East berliners would
not the operation conceived by East
German president wter ulri and approved
by kushav was launched at midnight
Sunday morning to catch the city off
guard within 24 hours barbed wire had
been nailed onto concrete posts through
5.16 Mi of Central
Berlin 67 of the 81 Crossing points
between the East and West were sealed
off movement through the remaining
controlled I listened to the news at 7:
a.m. August
13th and I immediately woke my brother
we then took our bicycle and drove along
the borders and saw how the concrete
holes were inserted into the asphalt
with the help of jackhammers barbed wire
barriers were built and a lot of
military men carrying weapons and it
looked like
War the first phase of locking down the
city was the most dangerous thousands of
Border guards and East German police
backed by East German army tanks were
sent into the streets along with 25,000
civilian reservists who had been wakened
by the police at 2: in the morning and
deployed with guns and barbed
wire no one had been told a word about
the operation in advance and no one knew
how anyone including the people of East
Berlin would
react if the people had red it they were
in deep trouble if the soldiers had said
we're not Manning this they would have
been in deep trouble it was a desperate
throw such a thing had never been tried
there were no rehearsals nothing when it
was clear that there was not going to be
an uprising East German and Soviet
officials held their breath over an even
bigger question how would the West in
particular the United States react West
Berlin was in an upro
with mass demonstrations and some
rioting but it was the US that and kov
were worried about the East German
authorities are terrified that the West
might actually respond that might be a
war so that they're being very careful
not to provoke the west and there are
orders that if they shoot they shouldn't
shoot so that any bullets enter West
Berlin they can only shoot parallel to
the wall or back into territory
in Washington President Kennedy closely
monitored events but as the days went by
it became clear that as long as the East
left West Berlin alone he was not going
to take military action the erection of
the wall was politically accepted by the
Western allies because this reduced or
even eliminated a source for future
conflict here the frontier was set
and no more people moving uh from East
Germany to West Germany east berin to
west berin and creating some kind of uh
of uh
um something which you could not
calculate so in some senses the building
of the wall solved the Berlin crisis and
all sides heaved a huge side relief
about that they wouldn't say that in
public but that's what a lot of Western
politicians thought at the time
after 3 days Kush chav and alri
concluded that the US would not strike
back on August 16th they issued orders
to put up permanent
barriers soldiers and workers began
hammering together what would become
known as the first generation wall a
hodge podge built up out of whatever
materials lay at hand stone and brick
were used to divide East and West Berlin
barbed wire and watchtowers would lock
off the rural border between West Berlin
and East German
Germany Western analysts puzzled over
how the East Germans managed to hide the
resources needed to erect a 100m
wall but the answer was staring everyone
in the
face East Berlin was a building site
because we' bummed it flat all they had
to do was go along to the building sites
and comeer whatever they wanted in terms
of concrete slabs breeze blocks bricks
anything they could lay hands on a very
so crude that it was laid without a
foundation the Wall's own weight would
have to suffice to hold it in place and
so extensive that materials that have
been earmarked for the construction of
20,000 apartment units were used to
build the wall the makeshift primitive
look of the structure barbed wire
visible everywhere nakedly announced its
intent to lock in anyone who might be
thinking of leaving including The Men
Who Built it I remember interviewing one
of them and asked him how he actually
felt about this and he said that deep
down you this really was gut-wrenching
work that he really felt he was Walling
off part of his family from his other
relatives on the other hand many in the
East were relieved to see the government
finally taking action there was
widespread resentment against the young
professionals trained at State expense
moreover World War II had exposed the
horrors of German fascism and there was
a strong desire to take the country in a
New Direction many felt that the wall
chance the Berlin Mo had a special
meaning concerns saving the Socialist
block it was a necessity for us because
U there was an immense Rich World
against us
uh and we had to overwhelm it but
stopping the flow of refugees with a
wall would prove to be a difficult and bloody
bloody [Music]
[Music]
undertaking historically Monumental
walls have been
few Hadrian's Wall marking the edge of
the Roman
Empire the 1500m Great Wall of
China the majino line a wall of
fortification designed to keep the
Germans out of France after the first world
world
war and the Atlantic Wall put up by the
Germans during World War II to block an
invasion across the English
Channel but the Berlin Wall was
different officially it was called an
anti-fascist protective barrier but it
was obvious from the start that its
purpose was not to keep enemies out but
to keep the 1.1 million people of East Berlin
Berlin
in its impact on the city was immediate
and profound following the post World
War II border between East and West
Berlin the wall blindly zigzagged
through the city cutting through streets
railroad tracks Bridges and whatever
else lay in its path 15 public
transportation routes that had tied East
and West together were abruptly
abandoned creating Eerie ghost stations
through which no trains
stopped innumerable families and friends
were splintered and torn apart you had
these very very tragic situations where
a couple would get married in the west
and would go to a predetermined point at
the wall sometimes the women wearing
their wedding dresses so that the
relatives in the East could wave to them
but even that was forbidden and they
built the wall to such a height that
people couldn't see over it and they
bricked up the windows and it was an
fener wave to people in the west some of
the most heroing dramas took place on
barau street where a long row of
apartment buildings stood on the exact
border between East and West
Berlin people living in these houses
when they looked out of the window their
head was in the west side and their foot
still in the East so it was here on this
side it was very simple to escape in the
first hours of the
wall some desperate residents jumped
into the Nets of West Berlin firemen who
encourage them from the street below at
least two elderly people died when they
missed the Nets
the most dramatic incident involved
77-year-old Freda Schulz who was caught
in a tug of war that epitomized the
city's plight with East German police
trying to drag her back through the
window and West Germans trying to pull her
down authorities in the East moved
quickly to seal off barau Street
evicting 2,000 people from 87 buildings
on September 20th then ricking up 1253
windows IND
doors the buildings were eventually
demolished to make room for the
Wall barow Street wasn't the only weak
Link in the first generation barrier
hundreds of people made it through
poorly guarded sections of barbed wire
which was used in place of stone in less
populated parts of the city and on the
rural border between East Germany and West
Berlin others smashed Vehicles including
this homemade tank through thin barriers
this section of the wall was knocked out
by a truck in [Music]
[Music]
1962 border guards were among the early
escapes 85 guards fled to the West in
the first 6 weeks of the wall including
one who was dramatically captured on
camera as he tossed away his gun and
jumped across a
fence Rudy turo was a Border guard from
1955 until he made a run for it with
three civilians on February 21st
1962 wearing his Sergeant's uniform he
pulled rank on his fellow guards
ordering them to go to a different
checkpoint he then led the refugees to
the wall things went well until one of
wire at that moment some other border
guards who saw us immediately use their
weapons and I was forced to shoot
heads and then we escaped into our house
in West Berlin and we were freed by American
soldiers not all escapes were
successful the first person to be shot
to death while crossing the wall was a
24-year-old Taylor named gter litfin
litvin was killed on August 24th while
trying to swim to the west across the
humble canal [Music]
[Music]
I went home on the 26th at 3: in the
morning where I found my mother crying
in the apartment which had been
completely taken apart nobody said that
my brother had been shot we learned that
in the evening during the program of the
Berlin TV station
sfb I went to forensic medicine in order
to find my brother and identify him I
broke the coffin open and and saw that
my brother seemed to be completely unhe
hurt he had only a Band-Aid on the tip
out Lin's death sent a chilling message
to everyone in
Berlin but it was another death a few
months later that shocked the city to
its core 18-year-old Peter fector was
shot in the back while scaling the wall
that used to stand right here just in
front of Checkpoint Charlie over an hour
he cried for help but was left to die
both the American troops and the East
German guards were afraid the other side
might shoot if they tried to help he was
laying at the foot of this wall crying
out help me help me and they nobody
could help him they had to order three
soldiers and it took a long time to get
the three soldiers there who went to
retrieve him and carried him away like a
like a rag doll so this was at least the
psychological signal for all those who
had in their minds to cross the
Wall very
risky don't do
that if individual debts were horrifying
the wall engendered other dramas that
were nerve-wracking for the
world none more so than a showdown at
Checkpoint Charlie between Soviet and
American tanks that began on October
25th 1961
just 2 months after the wall was
installed under the World War II 4
Powers agreement the US had absolute
right of movement into East Berlin but
suddenly East Berlin began to contest
that right and would not let American
Jeeps pass without showing
papers in the jittery context of the
Cold War it was just the kind of
incident that could spin out of control
especially with 30 us and 32 Soviet
tanks facing each other engines running cannons
loaded the world was genuinely
frightened this was the Cuban Missile
Crisis but 40 yards apart the worst case
scenario was that somebody lose a
nerve a soldier with a gun in a building
would lose his nerve and a tank would
fire and they're firing on us we're
firing on them and it goes all the way
back the crisis ended after 3 days when
kushav ordered the Soviet tanks to
slowly back away and the East Germans
once again allowed US soldiers to move
freely in and out of
Berlin despite such showdowns the wall
continued to evolve in 1963 the East
Germans began working on a second
generation structure made up of stacked
concrete slabs that could hold up better
against cars and trucks and they
methodically set about trying to plug
any weak spots in the
barrier they really go over the whole
wall the leadership Hanukah and the generals
generals
literally Pace out the wall they walk
along every step of the way they check
out the sewers they check out the
rivers grills underwater are put in the
rivers to stop swimmers getting through
barriers are put in the in the underground
underground
sewers and by about
1963 the only real way to get across is
by building tunnels and later on they
got much more sophisticated they had
underground listening equipment where
they could listen for tunneling they
would build counter tunnels which would
actually collapse the other
tunnels by mid
1963 a solid wall made up of
7,874 cubic yards of concrete separated
East and West Berlin barbed wire fencing
anchored by 116 wooden watchtowers
controlled the longer rural border
between East Germany and West
Berlin a 100 yard border Zone was added
to the entire wall in June of
1963 anyone entering the Zone without
proper authorization was
arrested although he had no intention of
going to war over the wall President
Kennedy did buy the spirits of West
Berlin when he visited the city on June 26th
26th
1963 1.5 million berliners nearly 70% of
the population turned out for his speech
all free men wherever they may live live
are citizens of
Berlin and therefore as a free man I
is I think many West berliners were
extremely touched that Kennedy was
prepared to come and show his solidarity
and that was if you like a a political
statement it meant I am prepared to
defend democracy in the west but
Kennedy's visit also made it clear that
the wall was a fact of life that was not
about to disappear indeed in purely
physical terms the Berlin Wall was only
shape from a design point of view the
bizarre challenge of the Berlin Wall was
figuring out how to create a barrier
that really could keep the 1.1 million
people of East Berlin trapped
inside no single wall could do that at
least not one that the East Germans with
their scarce resources could
afford instead they devised a wall
system that used layer upon layer of
surveillance detection obstruction and
control by
1965 the wall was actually two walls
each 10 to 12 ft High made of either
concrete or wire mesh fence and
separated by 30 to 100 yds depending on Terrain
in between was the death strip in which
most wouldbe escapes were caught or
killed here the devil was truly in the
details anyone who managed to scale the
inner wall had to then get past a 6t
wire mesh fence topped with rows of
barbed wire and rigged with
alarms beyond that lay landmines and
self-activating firing mechanisms
triggered by trip wire which were
deployed in rural areas those trying to
escape by vehicle had to plow through
upturned railroad tracks and an
anti-tank ditch strategically spaced
watchtowers high-intensity search lights concrete
concrete
bunkers and armed patrols added to the
morbid excess of urban
lockdown both inner and outer wall were
painted bright white against which
fugitives could be more easily
detected the land between the walls was
chemically spr throughout the
year there was a space of about 50 maybe
100 m which was kept clear of any
vegetation Berlin is built on Sand so it
was very Sandy and it would be Rak clean
every day to show any footprints that showed
showed
up dogs provided yet another layer of
detection the dogs were Tethered on
Stakes on Long leads so they could roam
the leashes extended from one dog to the
next to the point where they were
virtually nose to noose but couldn't
attack each other but were so close that
nobody could run between them meanwhile
the wall itself continued to evolve in
1968 the old improvised barrier was
taken down and replaced with a third
generation wall a quote modern border
made up of pre-fabricated sections and
anchored by Steel
beams guards of course were the key to
the whole system 8 thousand border
guards were carefully selected for their ideological
ideological
reliability berliners were excluded
because it was thought they might walk
at shooting other
berliners those with relatives in the
disqualified guarding the Border was
both tedious and nerve-wracking with
long shifts harsh conditions and disturbing
disturbing [Music]
orders in the unit where I was deployed
the morale was devastated many soldiers
had to serve for 12 hours and the
discipline was
disastrous they drank a lot of alcohol
because a lot of camarads did not agree
with the use of weapons in other words
fire they were generally armed with
Kalashnikov semi-automatic
rifles and very soon after the wall went
up there was a so-call Shoot to Kill
Order and it's quite clear from the
internal orders which Hanukkah
personally supervised that guard order
guards were expected to shoot as a last
resort but they were expected to shoot
and not to
miss indeed East German president wter
ulri himself presented this flag to the
guards who killed Peter fector honoring
them as the best border unit of 1962 [Music]
went to the Border guards to say thank
you thank you for a dead one at the wall
he had a special flag produced with his
own portrait on
it we will gain Victory with
valta when you look at it from the East
German point of view they had to
motivate those people otherwise uh they
would themselves and well at least
several ones have have done so to reduce
the risk of Escape guards were always
paired up strangers controlling each
other fully 1/5th of the guards belonged
to the stazi east Germany's notorious secret
secret
police so there were these strange
feeling out conversations between two of
them who didn't quite trust each other
and didn't know if the other one was
Secret Service or w report on them so
you have two people not trusting the
other one looking out across possibly 10
or 15 yards to a wall and then the West
with this galaxy of
neon the watchtowers were sparten no
toilets no cooking facilities no heat
trips to the bathroom and shift
changeovers were carefully
coordinated to replace them a Jeep came
along with two replacements
and one of The Replacements went up to
the Watchtower and replaced one who went
down and the second one went up from the
Jeep and replac the one who went down
and they drove off so that at no stage
were they off
balance adding to the queasy strain of
the job was the fact that it was
dangerous 16 border guards were shot to
death while serving at the Berlin
wall and this became if you like part of
the propaganda in East Germany that
these were the guards of Peace at the
border between two worlds and monuments
would actually be set up to the guards
but after the end of the war it was
discovered that about half of these men
were actually killed by their own troops
in firefights where one guard was trying
to escape from his fellow and decided to
make sure and put a bullet in his fellow
guard and that was something which East
berliners did not know at the time
something else that no one knew of
course was that the Berlin Wall a
seemingly permanent piece of the Cold
time by the 1970s East Germany had
evolved into one of the strongest
economies in Eastern
Europe the turnaround was due in large
part to the stabilizing influence of the
wall which effectively cut off the brain
drain of refugees and kept the social
system intact
But Rising stature in the world
Community made East Germany increasingly
sensitive about its most famous and
embarrassing piece of
infrastructure in 1975 the East Germans
began constructing a fourth generation
wall a makeover designed to give the
barrier a cleaner more respectable look
it was also designed to make the wall
even tougher to breach dozens of East
berliners were still trying to escape
each year usually at checkpoints with
false papers but sometimes through the
wall the latest renovation would make
that more
difficult 45,000 easy toinstall weather
and pollution resistant L-shaped
segments replaced the old wall that
separated the two berlins the bottom of
the L extended horizontally more than 6
ft in the ground to make the wall
impregnable to cars and trucks each
segment was 3.9 ft wide and 11.8 ft High
the top of the wall featur Ed a new
refinement a rounded crown made of
sewage piping that made it even harder to
scale it was very difficult to go over
and some tried it from from the West
even to as a provocation but but they
fall fall down because it's very
difficult to stay on the wall and in
this sense it was perfected and of
course the material of the wall when you
look at it you can see it right now at
at the remains of the wall there was
steel in
it and concrete which was very very
tight so it it would even resist I think
a a light
tank the impregnability of the fourth
generation wall was tested by the border guards
guards
themselves mockups of the wall were
built at their training Barracks
southeast of Berlin and initially they
would try to defeat the Wall they would
try to pole vault it they would try to
blow it up and in one instance they used
an old t34 tank to try and RAM the wall
and they were always
defeated the cleaner looking revised
wall may have been bad news for people
who wanted to get out but it did have a
silver lining at least for some in the
west this is the wall which became a
gift to Western graffiti artists it was
just so smooth and
irresistible that they would cover it in
graffiti and at regular intervals these
German border guards would go out
through the little secret doors they had
in the wall and respray it whites but
within weeks thing would be this
really the image makeover continued into
the 1980s One By One The more visually
disturbing components of the wall system were
were
eliminated the tank barriers made of
upright railro road tracks and the
automatic firing
mechanisms but East Germany had no
intention of doing away with the wall
indeed the government proudly celebrated
the 25th birthday of its anti-fascist
protective barrier in
1986 at the same time it began drawing
up plans for a minimally manned 21st
century version of the structure dubbed
border wall
2000 plans were being made to use
microwaves to use electronic technology
to use heat sensors to detect
escapers I think this would have cost
the state an enormous amount of money
but given past experience the East
Germans would have spent that money if
you seek peace as it turned out they
never got the chance Mr
gorbachov teared down this
wall by the time President Reagan made
this appeal in Berlin in 1987
forces were already in motion that would
bring the wall and the division of the
world that it represented crashing
down when Soviet president M gorbachov
announced a new policy of perisa or
reform he made it clear that the Soviet
Union would not intervene militarily in
eastern block
Affairs protesters throughout East
Germany and especially East Berlin began
demanding radical changes including the
right to free movement
travel as demonstrations grew
increasingly massive and defiant the
Aging East German polit buau finally
began to think about taking down the
wall it was the beginning of some
realistic consideration of what is
happening around us but it was also too
late to uh by changing some accents of
the Communist policy to gain uh the
trust of uh the
people on November 9th 1989 gun
schabowski made the stunning
announcement all travel restrictions
between East and West Berlin were over
the wall had come
down ironically for a system in which so
much was controlled this momentous
decision was announced without ever
informing the Border guards who were
immediately swamped with people trying
to get to the West it was a very
dangerous misunderstanding the soldiers
did not know and trembled what what
shall we do and some will say go back
that's a mob and it will shoot and the
real Wonder is that that it did not
happen fortunately in the chaos of
November 9th no names were added to the
list of those shot and killed trying to
wall after nearly three decades hundreds
of killings thousands of escapes and the
occasional nuclear scare the Berlin Wall
down for many who had grown up with the
wall it was hard to believe that it was really
really
history one way to make sure was by
attacking the wall physically as
thousands of berliners gleefully
did it was not just something to to take
home something which would see history
maybe a year or two later it was also I
think some kind of accumulated
frustration accumulated anger that led a
lot of West biners to make their own
contribution to get the wall
done official demolition of the 96 mile
double wall began on June 13th
1990 it was a major
undertaking with 45,2 point7 ton segments
segments
127.5 km of electrical fencing and three 302
302
watchtowers ironically it fell to the
Border guards to bring it
down it was constructed not to be
destroyed and now it had to be destroyed
so uh that was the last job of the Border
Border
guards that they had to take care of the
remains of the wall after they finished
their job there was nothing to do for them
them
anymore most of the wall was crushed and
recycled his
pavement some 250 of the more
brilliantly painted segments were
carefully removed by the German State
and sold at auction in Monte Carlo
generating over $1
million large chunks were sent to
bastions of the West as trophies of the
Cold War the
CIA the Reagan [Music]
[Music]
Library other segments wound up in
Curious places
an outdoor Cafe on 53rd Street in Midtown
Manhattan and a urinal in the Main
Vegas components of the wall system were
also sold off including the vicious
guard dogs hundreds of them which have
been trained to turn on their own
handlers if they tried to make a break
they turned out to be so docile that
the killer dogs turned out to be
wonderful wonderful pets who didn't
molest burglars or anything the fall of
the wall dramatically changed the look of
of
Berlin incredibly the death strip across
the heart of the city was now Choice
real estate and developers moved
in hot stommer plats which in 1989
looked like this is now a favorite
corporate address home to Daimler Benz and
and
Sony tourist once again roam around the
brandenberg gate where for 28 years a
lives and in a mingling of grotesqueries
the former death strip will become the
new home for a World War II Holocaust
Memorial a vast Monument designed to
look like an off-kilter
Cemetery the only preserved section of
the death strip is on barau street where
a memorial has been set up with tiny
slits in the East Berlin side of the
wall that afford a glimpse of what was
Land the wall itself is almost entirely
gone except for the East Side
gallery and a few remnants that have
been salvaged or that nobody bothered to tear
down a line of stone traces its former
path zigzagging through Berlin like
Footprints from the past
the past lingers less visibly in the
ongoing attempt to sort through
questions of guilt and responsibility
for the killings that took place at the
wall who is responsible is it the people
who pulled the triggers the ordinary
guards at the wall or was it their
political bosses at the end of the day
some of the political leaders did
actually have to serve a prison sentence
in the cases of the trigger pullers this
was not something which the authorities
could turn a blind eye to so that trials
were held but generally the charge was
one of manslaughter not of murder and in
nearly all cases a suspended s sentence was
was
given East German president Ernst
honiker was put on trial in 1993 but
released for ill health he died in Exile
in Chile the next
year gter schabowski who served on the
polit buau between 1984 and 198 89 when
three people were killed at the wall was
sentenced to 3 years he is the only
high-ranking member of the East German
government to take responsibility for the
the
deaths I was a member of the highest
power and just to ignore the
facts that people shall be killed if
they wanted without any criminal intention
intention
just to leave a
country I'm also responsible for
this the concept of the wall is control
so if you control everything you solve
problems this concept leads to
to
death and it took all your resources so
in a way this wall building Strikes Back
and here you can
learn from a from a country who was very
perfect in doing it it doesn't work it
doesn't work at all [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
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