Pavel wrote:
Jozef ... we escaped in 68 when the Russians invaded. I still remember them shooting the old lady who used to babysit me and the tanks on the side of street. Yeah, the history may be faded in many peoples minds now ... but it pays to sometimes reflect on the traumatic parts of the past ... just to put the brakes on a bit on the tendency to re-do the same things and excuse them by the little details that do differ.
East Germany was the only European country I did not travel to in the '80 when I lived there. I came close about two years before the wall fell; being 18 and in the presence of machineguns was not something new to me then, but I remember touching the wall and still feeling the other side was a thousand km away.
I watched the fall of the wall on TV. I've come to see it as one of the two defining moments of history during my own life time. The other was the landing on the moon.
The tragedy that was the Third Reich was replaced in the East by the tragedy of the GDR and the wall. Yes, there were some leaders that helped things along, but as the Pope himself said, (paraphrase) "It was like an old rotten tree. All it needed was a tiny shove to topple it." Ultimately it fell to the pressure of millions yearning for freedom. There is still another wall, and the regime that built it is even more evil. And, they are playing with nuclear missiles. North Korea will also fall, in time.
I was 13 years old, still in elementary school, living in Hungary. We visited East Germany in 1986 -- that was as far West as we could possibly go. I remember when the iron curtain finally fell, and we drove over to Austria. That was the first time in my life that I saw a real shopping mall. We were no longer forced to learn Russian in school. My parents got me a PC, put together from parts we bought in Austria. I don't think I'd be here in the Silicon Valley developing software (and shooting Nikon) without those historical turn of events. I have no photos to share, but the images live in my memory.
