The 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Monday, November 9th, 2009 will mark the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down. Built with barbed wire and concrete in August of 1961 by the Communist East, The Berlin Wall, stretching for about 30 miles, was a Cold War symbol which separated East and West Berlin, preventing people from leaving East Germany. According to the “August 13 Association” which specialises in the history of the Berlin Wall, at least 938 people – 255 in Berlin alone – died, shot by East German border guards, attempting to flee to West Berlin or West Germany. It stood for 28 years as a division between the Soviets and the Allies. The wall was torn down after Communism collapsed in 1989. During the summer of 1989, tens of thousands of East Germans fled the communist regime. The photos below show the initial building of the Wall in 1961, the fall of the Wall in 1989 and how the sections of the Wall look today. The last group of photos shows comparisons of how Berlin looked with the Wall and how the city looks now that the Wall is gone.