Healing Well of Miriam

There are occasions that bring memories of times past strongly back to mind.  I had one of those memorable moments at the George HW Bush Presidential Library’s commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall.  As I stood before a piece of that wall, all covered with graffitied messages for visions of hope for liberty, I reflected on how much this symbol of oppression had shaped my thinking—those of us who are free are obligated to speak out for those who are not. 

On June 26, 1963, President John F Kennedy visited Berlin and expressed his empathy with the words: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” 

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate and declared: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” 

I was a child of the Cold War, born in the 1950s.  The USSR loomed large as the antithesis of everything America stood for.  My dad was in the US Army, and by the time I was ten years old, I had lived about half my life in Germany.  It was from him that I learned to value the freedoms and privileges of being an American.  Living in Germany in the early 1960s, I saw some of the rubble of buildings bombed in World War II.  There was an ever-present consciousness of the Berlin Wall and the plight of the people in East Germany, because my dad’s unit at the time was assigned to Berlin on temporary duty. 

My friends and I regularly walked to the movies on post behind our housing area in Augsburg.  One movie, based on an actual story, stuck in my mind through all the years of my life: “Escape from East Berlin.”  I could feel the desperation of the people in the story, willing to take incredible risks to escape the communist regime.  People tried to scale the wall; some may have made it, but many were shot or captured and jailed.  The people in the film dug a tunnel underneath the wall.  Sitting in the dark theatre, I shuddered from the thought of the tunnel’s darkness and all that dirt overhead.   And then, it was edge of my seat anxiety over all the people making it  through the tunnel before the police could catch them. 

After World War II, Germany was divided between the allies—the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR—with the Western Allies administering the Western sector and the Soviets the Eastern sector.  Berlin was similarly divided.  The Western Allies administered the occupation of West Germany from 1945 to 1952.  After two world wars, in which the Soviets suffered the most tremendous losses, they did not trust the Germans to rule themselves and, therefore, maintained control of the Eastern sector of Germany and Berlin. The Berlin Wall was built in 1961 due to the numbers of people fleeing to the West.  It was more than the separation of families, although this was an important reason, it was due to the hardship of living under communist tyranny.  Just across that wall was still Germany, but yet a completely different life. 

The 1980s began a time of revolution against the oppression of communism in Eastern Europe.  On  November 9, 1989, amid massive protests, the Berlin Wall came down.    In February of 1989, the Solidarity trade union demanded free elections in Poland.  Hungarians protested for democracy to replace their communist government.  In May of 1989, the dismantlement of Iron Curtain began with 150 miles of barbed wire border with Austria.  In 1990, amidst the new political freedom spreading across Europe, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia voted out their communist governments and started moving towards independence.  Also in 1990, Yugoslavia broke apart into independent states—Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Montenegro.  On December 31, 1992, the federal republic of Czechoslovakia officially became the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

On December 3, 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George HW Bush released a joint statement announcing the end of the Cold War.  By December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union had disbanded, and its fifteen constituent republics had gained full independence.

The Berlin Wall was a symbol of the vision of freedom and liberty.  The late 1980s, going into the 1990s, was a time for the birth of that vision.  But more than political freedoms, it was the dawn of Redemption of a completely new age, the promise envisioned by the Prophets of Israel for the whole world.