“A friend called me, I live way up in the mountains on a remote place, he called, I drove 20 miles to his house for he has television and I saw people dancing on the Brandenburg Gate. I just thought: Yes! Yes! Freedom! Freedom for the East! It meant so much to me,” said Guenther.
25 years after the collapse of the wall, Checkpoint Charlie, infamous crossing point between East and West Berlin, stands as a reminder of a city, split into two by ideology and a concrete wall.
“Our daughter was only one year old and the Wall was being built,” says former resident of Bernauer Strasse in Berlin. “It was very dramatic, it was terrible. Everyone cried. They waved from over there and we waved back. We are so happy that it turned out so well and that everything is open again. That we are all happy.”
At least 138 people were killed trying to escape to West Berlin and many more who were captured ended up in jail. The fall of the wall signalled an end to the Cold War and led to a reunified Germany and Europe.
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