49th Anniversary Of The Building Of The Berlin Wall

Our right wing friends probably got the idea for the 'Tortilla Curtain' from what happened 49 years ago today, the start of construction for the Berlin Wall and the subsequent Inner German Border fence.



For you peeps who were toddlers or weren't even thought of, while I was a year from being born myself when the Berlin Wall went up, it was a reality for people of my generation who grew up during the Cold War and remember 'duck and cover' drills and Checkpoint Charlie.

Here's an excellent documentary from the German national network Deutsche Welle called 'Walled In'. It gives you an idea what The Wall looked like through the magic of computer animation circa the 1980s in the Bernauer Strasse area and a glimpse of the IGB.



Much of it has been dismantled since its fall in 1989, but sections of it are still preserved in Germany as memorials to the people who died trying to cross it to freedom.