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Brief historical overview:
Until August 1961
The border between East and West Berlin is opened and daily half a million people cross the border from one part of the city into the other.
Many East Berliners go into the cinema or discos in the West, they even work in the West or they go shopping in the West.
Women get the first seamless panty hoses in the West, tropical fruits are only available there.
At the same time the leaders of the Communist parties of the Commecon meet in Moscow from August 3 until August 5, 1961
and they decide to close the open border between East and West Berlin.
August 12/13, 1961
In the afternoon of August 12 at 4 p.m. Walter Ulbricht, the East German leader, signed the commands to close the border.
Next Sunday at midnight the army, police and the "Kampfgruppen" began to bolt the city.
The wall is built and separates the city into two parts for more than 28 years.
Streets, the railway and the S-Bahn (city railway) are broken, stations of the U-Bahn
(underground railway) are closed, even cemeteries are not spared.
Nothing is forgotten and the East Germans will not be allowed to free travel to the West until 1989.
November 9, 1989
A press conference is held where the SED government announced that travel restrictions for East Germans had been lifted.
In that night people from East Berlin flooded into the western part of the city and hundreds of thousands celebrated throughout the city.
Next day Berliners begin to discover the other part of their city.
The Berlin Wall today
The German are thorough people. The Wall was completly removed and there are only a few parts which can still be found.
One of the most asked question is: "Where is the Wall?".
External web sites:
The Cold War - CNN Interactive's COLD WAR Web site
Ten Years after -The Fall of Communism - Radio Free Europe
Chronik der Wende - Chronical about the Fall of the Berlin Wall
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