THE COMMUNIST-BUILT BERLIN WALL OF SHAME IN NOVEMBER, 1966 AT THE HEIGHT OF THE COLD WAR

The Berlin Wall, a very integral part of the Iron Curtain from 1961 to 1989 was the largest and most visible European Communist symbol of the Cold War ever built and was the most odious and heartbreaking sight I ever saw in my entire life! Would-be escapees whose numbers were well past 100 were coldly and mercilessly gunned down by Communist East German border guards known as ,,Der Vopos," a telescoping of the word ,,Der Volkspolizei" or "The People's Police" which was the Kalashnikov-AK47-armed uniformed branch of the Stasi, the East German secret police which was just as dreaded as Nazi Germany's Gestapo and its Waffen SS. Other would-be escapees were arrested, taken away and subsequently disappeared without a trace and even without any records ever being kept of their arrests and the Wall of Shame's height was increased by about two meters (about 6'7") to make observation from either side much more difficult without observation platforms which existed in the West but were ,,verboten" ("forbidden") in the East. Today, there are still remnants of the Berlin Wall which have been deliberately left there as a reminder that FREEDOM IS NOT FREE! On a personal note, as an American and as an honorably-discharged U.S. Air Force Veteran of German ancestry, I thank God that that ugly wall and that psychopathic Communist dictatorship that built it are gone and that Germany has reunited as one sovereign Federal Republic with its capital moved from Bonn (Beethoven's birthplace) back to Berlin. Once again, we are reminded of the indisputable fact that FREEDOM IS NOT FREE! It is always paid for in wars, blood and suffering not to mention the superstaggering costs in human lives and in the NOW-TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS! * Camera used: Voigtlander Bessamatic Deluxe 35mm SLR with its Zeiss-made Septon 50mm f-2 lens * Original film used: Kodachrome II ISO 25 which I scanned with an ION FILM 2 SD PLUS scanner into my Picasa3 software in which I digitized and subsequently converted it to black-and-white in order to emphasize the states of utter bleakness, negativity, emptiness, hatred, tyranny, hostility, despair and depression for which the Berlin Wall of Shame stood which existed on the Communist side. Although Berlin has been one city and free for 26 years and counting, its wartime legacies including the deliberate and premeditated inflictions of the Nazi-and-Communist-inflicted wounds on Germany will probably never really completely heal (opinion mine)
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