Freiheit

It is a week of remembrance.Yesterday was Rememberance Day in Great Britain, when the United Kingdom remembers those who have served and have passed in service of the nation. Wednesday is Veteran's Day in the United States, when we do the same.

And today? Today is the day we remember the freedom that all of those brave men and women have fought and died for. It is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Now, for many, this was a passing which is marked with pictures of people pouring through the Bornholmer Strasse crossing, as East German Volksarmee boarder guards looked on, perplexed and dazed. More pictures, people crawling on the wall, champagne, bananas, and oranges flying freely in the air - euphoria. For me, the meaning of today goes far beyond those images, which still reduce me to tears, over and over.

I married into a family that had lived, for forty years, on two sides of the Wall. My father in law, from Koblenz (west), met my mother in law during the Second World War. He was an injured soldier, sent to Leipzig (east) to recuperate. She, from Grimma (east), was a bank employee. They met and fell in love.

The war proceeded, and the Americans came in, saving the eastern part of Germany after having secured the western part of the country. Then, in the agreement between the Allies, America gave up Eastern Germany, in order to secure a section of Berlin, the capitol, which the Russians had already occupied. The Americans retreated, leaving a vacuum. The Russian soldiers came in, raped the women en masse, took over the homes and slowly started the strangulation of life in their sector.

And Germany was divided, for the next forty years, into four sectors: British (Northwestern), French (Southwestern), American (central) and Russian (eastern). Berlin, the city, was divided the same way, but was landlocked -- three "free" sectors and one communist sector in a sea of Communism, behind the Iron Wall.

My father in law returned home, and my mother in law could no longer leave her sector. He went over for her, though, and they arranged a wedding. Her friends got passes to travel to the Russian sector of Berlin (yes, even within the Russian sector, travel was extremely limited - and traveling to Berlin was tightly controlled because of the possibility of escape to the Western part of the city - this was before the Wall was even built), and brought cakes and precious wine back to Grimma.

They married. They could have stayed there but they had a chance -- since my father in law was from the French sector -- to escape. He could leave legally, but she could not. She was a bank employee, and she knew that the Russian soldiers were for the most part completely illiterate in their own language, much less the German language. She stamped her own passport with bank stamps, and signed them. They showed the stamped pass to the Russian soldiers, at three different check points, and they let her through.

At the final check point, however, was an East German soldier. He looked at the passport. He looked at her. He knew exactly what she had done. And he told her... to go. And she went. To Western Germany. To freedom. She was so brave.

But she did not go without paying a price. She left her father, her cousins, her home. Her family was well established in Grimma. She left every single thing behind. She and my father in law started again, in Koblenz, then in Mainz, to build a life together, with other family members that managed to escape. It is the home in which she lives today, alone, at the age of 89.

My mother in law would only see her father a few more times in her life, on approved visits - the last time he would no longer recognize her, his mind taken by dementia. On the last visit, for his funeral, she was taken into custody with her two small children for several hours at an East German check point, a move intended to intimidate a grief stricken young mother.

This is what comes back to me today, this most important day, when that wall came down in peace and euphoria. I will never forget how my family felt, the wall having come down too late to help my mother in law or her father. But both my mother in law and father in law were finally able to visit Grimma, see her family home which had been lost to the system, and close the circle.

This is a video of "Winds of Change" by the Scorpions. It was played at the Berlin Wall after it came tumbling down. This particular version was recorded later with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. To me, it holds all of the emotion and promise of that time in history. A time which was the most important of my generation - when barriers fell, lies were disclosed, systems folded, and people peacefully walked towards the light.

Freiheit. Pace. FREEDOM.

Die Dinge kommen ganz anders als du denkst.... things always happen differently than you think...