The Berlin Wall: We Built It For You!

The Berlin Wall: We Built It For You!

Another incredible photo of the east side of the Berlin Wall from Don Salyards, taken in the 1970s. I'll let Don tell the story:

This photo was taken from the EAST side of the wall. It is a propaganda sign. This was kind of a "showpiece" part of the wall, where the wall was so high and the courtyard so big that they didn't need the tank traps or barbed wire.

My contact in the east, a young man who showed us around that Sunday, explained that Frei Welt fur Dich meant that the East Germans were walling the Western imperialists out!

He was good at the propaganda, but didn't believe it. While he was loyal during the whole day, the last thing he asked me was what would happen to him if he jumped off an East German merchant boat between Cuba and Miami!

A couple of years later in was in a class Don was teaching at Winona State University where he showed us this photo. In almost 30 years, I've never forgotten it. In fact, I searched many times on the internet to find a photo like this, and never found one. So a while ago I asked him to look around for the photos of his long-ago trip to Berlin, and he was able to find them. He sent them to me, I had them scanned, and posted two of them here.

Why did I go to all this trouble? Für Dich -- For You! And so we never forget what a monstrosity Communism was in general, and the Berlin Wall was in particular.

Comments

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Tom,

Thanks for posting this. We should never forget.

Jim

[phil]

actually, there's a difference between communism and socialism.

[Danny]

Right, too many democrats wanting to build too much socialism to forget the commi horrors.

Danny
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