Ruminations upon Sunday August 25, 2024 in Berlin, Germany
The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall was an important event in European history. After WWII, Berlin, the capital of Germany, was divided into East and West Berlin. East Berlin was ruled by the Soviet Union and West Berlin was ruled by the U.S., Great Britain, and France. The Soviet Union treated the people who lived in East Berlin badly because they were a communist government. A communist government is like a dictatorship, which means the people have to do everything they say and if they do not they would be punished ( Shot, thrown in jail, etc.). Communism is a type of economy where people are all given the same amount of resources. This might sound good, but it means that if two people had the same job and one of them worked for ten hours and the other worked for one hundred hours they would be paid the same amount.
People did not want to be treated like this so they started to cross into West Berlin where they were treated much better because it was a capitalist economy. A capitalist economy means that people were paid based on how much they worked and they could do what they wanted with their resources. They were also free to believe what they wanted and to disagree with the government without consequences. The Soviet Union did not like that people were running away so they started to build a wall that literally cut Berlin in half and made it so that people could not escape to West Berlin.
Another reason the Soviet Union built the Berlin Wall was because the countries that ruled West Berlin thought that they would all be ruling Berlin together but the Soviet Union wanted to rule East Berlin by itself, but the other countries did not agree. So the Soviet Union built the wall to make it clear that they were in charge of East Berlin. The Berlin Wall was over 100 miles long and had armed guards posted every few meters. The guards were ordered to shoot anyone who tried to cross over the wall. The Soviet Union started building the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961. They finished it on around August 27, 1961. It took only two weeks to build a 100 mile wall!!! The wall stood for 25 years. In those 25 years over 100,00 people tried crossing over the wall. Around 5,000 got across, over 140 were killed, and the rest turned back before anything could happen.
On November 9, 1989 people started to protest at the Berlin Wall. They protested against the Soviet Union and it was getting out of hand so some border control officer opened a gate and let people through. By then there was nothing the Soviet Union could do. So people started destroying the wall. People who had not seen their friends or family for years were reunited, basically it was a happy moment.
This is an essay Amichai wrote over several weeks as part of learning about the history of the Berlin Wall.
