Freedom stronger than an iron fist

On Monday the world celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall. The wall's fall signaled the end of the Soviet Union's iron grip on Eastern Europe. The wall was the desperate last ditch effort by dictatorial communist regimes to isolate their citizens from the influence of free Europe.

At the end of World War II the allies divided Europe and Germany. Russia clenched East Germany in its iron fist. France, Britain and the U.S. occupied the West Germany. East Germany surrounded Berlin.

Berlin was divide into two parts, West and East Berlin. Russia held East Berlin, the allies West Berlin.

Berlin shone as freedom's beacon in the midst of a sea of oppression. The allies sent food and supplies to West Berlin by land. In 1948 the Soviets set up a blockade closing land routes into West Berlin.

America, Canada, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand began the Berlin Airlift. For one year the allies supplied West Berlin with food and supplies entirely by air.

East Germans escaped the repression of the East by sneaking into West Berlin and then onward to West Germany and free Europe. They ran a gauntlet of the guards, dogs and land mines to enter the West.

To stem the flow of the flight to freedom the Soviets built a wall between the two Berlins. On one side of the wall West Berlin flourished with a free economy and political system. On the other side of the wall a dictatorial regime crushed the dreams and aspirations of its people.

In 1963 President Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. The president said that people who thought communism was the wave of the future, or that the West could work with the communist regimes, or for people who didn't understand the differences between east and west "(l)et them come to Berlin."

I attended a college that sent students abroad to study. My program sent me to West Germany. I could speak enough German to live with a German family. One weekend our group of students went to Berlin. The wall had been up for 5 years.

On the road to Berlin we could see the frontier between East and West Germany. Watch towers in the East were located with enough frequency so that the entire frontier was observable by the guards in those towers. Dogs and barbed wire were prominent features of the frontier. The dogs, guards, fences and land mines did not protect East Germany. They kept keep East Germans from going West.

The passage of our bus through the towers, tank traps, barbed wire and guards created a somber mood among the group of college students.

The border between the two Berlins was marked by a more condensed version of the frontier between East and West Germany, but with an addition of the wall. People continued to escape to the West. Some died in the attempt. Their stories were memorialized along the wall.

With passports Westerners could enter East Berlin and return with relative ease. With a couple of other students I entered East Berlin. We saw a church that was impressive from the outside but was only a shell inside.

We attended a theater that played a movie, "The Daily Show." It portrayed western royalty and wealthy people living the high life and lines of people destitute and obviously from the Great Depression. The message was clear. East Germany was a workers paradise.

On the street we were stopped by a woman who asked for a cigarette. None of us smoked so couldn't help her. In a very agitated manner told us to go back to the West and not return to the East. She said that we were in a bad place, East Berlin.

When I saw the wall in Berlin 23 years before it fell I would not have predicted its fall. Its fall in 1989 was peaceful. The example of freedom was stronger than an iron fist. Not a bad thing to remember.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Richard Clark, Escanaba, practices personal injury law throughout the Upper Peninsula.