The fall of the wall

Katie van Schaijik | Nov 9, 2009

Today is the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the Berlin wall. I remember the day. Jules and I (just married in July) were huddled with other IAP students around the TV in the Studentenheim in Liechtenstein, watching and hardly believing our eyes.

Here is John O’Sullivan, author of The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister, writing about it in today’s New York Post.

There was a natural outburst of rejoicing throughout Europe — more from ordinary people on both sides of the Iron Curtain than from their cautious governments. In its 70-plus years of power, Soviet communism had murdered tens of millions of people; penned millions more in slave camps; corrupted those beyond its raw power; ruled through terror, censorship and lies; launched World War II jointly with the Nazis, and concealed its criminal rule behind a Potemkin façade of social idealism and scientific advance.