Visiting
Berlin Wall/Carlos Pueblo
One day I
went to visit Berlin Wall twice with a very sorry impression.
Berlin Wall
was built in 1961 and removed in 1989 consequently with
the
collapsed of East Germany, Soviet Union, and its East Europe
communist
states. After WWII, Germany was divided to East and West,
Berlin was separated
by a line then a wall affiliated to these two German
Nations, of
course, I forgot to mention the occupation by the four victors
agreement at
Potsdam nearby Berlin. During the first 15 years, there were
3.5 million
East German left their nation to the West and the national
Security of
the East was threaten for the loss of more than 10% of its work
force;
therefore, they decided to build a Wall between the two Berlin to
prevent the
migration, current day we call it refugee. Between 1961-1989,
there were
still more than 5,000 attempted to escapes and 200 were shot
by the East
guards.
In late
1989, the east German took trains to Budapest, Hungary, then another
train to
Vienna, Austria, a German speaking nation, and the third train going
to West
Germany. We saw the episode everyday on the television and newspaper.
East German
ruler tried to stop by all means yet failed and didn’t know what to
do. Pressure
to Hungarian authority to stop the bleeding, the refugee jammed
the embassy
of West Germany and opened the second route to escape via Prague,
Czechoslovakia
and Vienna. In a matter of days, the East regime collapsed.
We have seen
many nations perished after wars yet not as dramatically and
peacefully
as East Germany. A tour guide mentioned that at the time of the built
of the Wall,
East Germany desperately needed the construction materials for the
war
reconstruction and the authoritarian regime ignored that priority. From the
ruin
of Wall
Memorial, we can see the low quality of the construction never can be
mentioned to
compare with the German Empire glory in
history.
Angela
Merkel was from the era of East Germany and I bet she understood the
suffering of
the refugee. I understood because I was from Taiwan under a severe
dictatorship
of a Chinese rule. After the Wall collapse, Beijing communist regime
are scared
that they are to be the next to fall, they relax their exit rule and now
you can see
Chinese immigrants all over the corner of the world. I blame the
problem of
refugee coming from the authoritarian, communist only 4 left, and
inefficient
government for all the difficulty occurred in their nations, of course,
Asian are
not European and Chinese are not German, it takes 71 years for Taiwanese
to get rid
of Chinese regime.
