Page 43 - Bulletin, Vol.79 No.1, February 2020

the Herr Doctor, the UN Official on mission to GDR. So with Kathrin and friends, I joined
forces with this innumerable crowd for this work of demolition, which we were not
aware at the time, was a work of IMMENSE CONSTRUCTION!

Next day the demolition continued. Those East Germans who went through the
breaches to visit the West mostly came back later to the quietness of their homes; the
first impression gathered from those who had gone across and then came back was
YES to FREEDOM, but NO to the over-rich, materialistic lifestyle of the West .

The wall was made up of a variety of concrete material and of bricks. I even kept one of
the bricks that I had helped remove, as a souvenir. But the real achievement of these
days was not to be measured in terms of concrete and bricks; it was in the hearts of
man, as always. The political experiment of totalitarian communism, keeping millions
restricted behind an Iron Curtain was over. It was the end of an era, almost the end of
th
the 20 century which has seen 100 million people massacred in 50 wars, two of them
World Wars. May be this year should be the last year when we commemorate the
Armistice of the two World Wars, now best forgotten, as indeed Germany itself has
done: rebuilding itself after the War and reunified after the Wall was opened.

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