The Wall Bashny.Net

Famously described. Educational program on the Park.
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1961 Berlin. This "western" German waving to their relatives or friends on the other, "eastern" side of the wall being built that divided families, as it seemed then, forever. In those days in the Berlin light converged wedge, it pulled in different directions - the communist government Ulbricht complained Adenauer threats and provocations at the border, and that, in turn, demanded special status for West Berlin and did not acknowledge the existence of the GDR.

Berlin Crisis of 1961 was a kind of precursor to the Caribbean. So in October 1961, there were tanks on Friedrichstrasse two armies - the American and Soviet. They separated when not more than two hundred meters. The border had been closed, bridges burned, no way back, former allies ready to fight each other.



October 28 tension reached its climax. Photographers waiting to see what will happen next.



Then there was nothing - after 17 hours of confrontation, Soviet tanks turned back in a few minutes and then left the US. Berliners get used to living in a new environment - now and grandchildren and grandparents had to show through yet low wall.



Since it began in August, when the border was closed. Berliners still can not believe that they can not pass on the street - she was a stranger.







Here is a picture, in my opinion, one of the most dramatic in a series of photographic evidence shoots of East Germans to the West. Woman tries to jump out of the windows of the house, which stands on the border sectors. At the bottom waiting for her relatives, on the other hand pull back the fugitive agents "Stasi". Escape from the GDR is punishable with imprisonment up to eight years, in all the years in these cases were sentenced 75,000 people. 5000 were able to cross the wall and escape from communist Germany in many ways - through the underground tunnels, gliders and balloons.



In escapees was arranged a hunt. GDR border troops had orders to shoot at them, and this right in full. In this photo - eighteen year old Peter Fechter, fifteenth victim of the East German border guards. Fechter was shot to death August 17, 1962 while trying to climb over the wall. Seriously wounded a young man lay against the wall for about an hour, until he died. Hundreds of people on both sides of the wall watched his agony, but could not help.



Border guards and police of the GDR takes body Fechter. In 1966, border guards shot and killed two children 10 and 13 years - it was shot more than forty times! All the years of division of the city into two parts, according to various estimates killed between 125 and 645 people.



In the night from 9 to 10 November 1989 ceased Wall divided Germany. But up to this point still had to live.

photos: Bettmann, Scanpix arkiv
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