09 Nov

9. November 2018 @ Sachsen, Deutschland

Sitting in the train starting from Dresden and ending at Hof in Bavaria, I want to share some history I read.

In 1989, after huge effort made by Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the federal minister of foreign affairs of West Germany, the several thousands of refugees from East Germany crowded at the embassy of West Germany in Prague, Czechoslovakia are finally permitted by East Berlin to be expelled to West Germany. Genscher’s announcement to the refugees at Prague did not even end before the sound of cheering interrupted his sentence. However, this “freedom train” has to cross the East Germany territory across Dresden to Hof. Some of the refugees decided to remain for the fear of persecution to their family in East Germany. Meanwhile, on Hetzdorfer Viadukt, which was built in 1868 and where the train must slow down for safety, some other people came and jumped up to the train to the freedom when it passed by.

This is what I read when I saw the Hetzdorfer Viadukt. Sometimes we get amused by the weird and interesting ideas come up with by East German people to escape, and forget what they suffered from and what made them so creative and innovative. The history always loses its functionality of warning and only remain entertainment.

Six weeks after the refugees trains from Prague, people from East German are finally free to move. That was the 9th November 1989, exactly 29 years before today, when the border limit between the two parts of Germany was “mistakenly” canceled.

After 29 years, in other places around the world, people are still building walls, concrete or abstract, separating people, by gender, by ethnicity, by political opinions, by how much educated, etc. The walls can be built with apathy, can be built with ignorance, and can be also built with fear or contempt. Once we select to build walls rather than bridges, the diverge of us only become bigger.

P.S. The date can be very controversial in some part of Germany because it was also the date of the foundation of Weimar Republic(1918), Hitlerputsch(1923) and Kristallnacht(1938) and therefore might not be celebrated for the fall of the Berlin Wall.