The Day The Wall Came Down

Thirty years ago today the Berlin Wall came down.  Do you remember that night?  I do.

In this post I talk about what it was like to grow up and live in the Cold War, and how I ended up with a piece of the Berlin Wall.

Have you ever seen The Lives of Others?  It's about a Stasi agent who surveilled a playwright in East Germany.  Parts of it are dry, but from what I've read I have no doubt that it accurately describes life in a real police state.  It's sickening.

This morning I read this:

Thirty years later, Germany is reunified, a powerhouse country once again, but the story is not over. East Germans are still seeking answers for some of the bad things that happened to them. The Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic — commonly called the Stasi Archives — is open to the public. But in the frantic final days of the regime, the secret police began tearing up files. The public moved on them, blocking further sabotage but the Stasi managed to fill 17,000 bags with shreds of paper.

The Germans are putting them all back together. They want all who lived in former East Germany to be able to find out exactly what had been done to them.

Do you want more government?  That's what happens when you get more government.