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
samsonblinded.org

[TooMuchTime]

Well, Phil. I guess the difference is similar to this.

Don't forget that the Soviet Union considered themselves to be the home of world socialism. The end result of communism is socialism.

[Tom Asher]

Hi Mr. Tom:
Not sure if you would remember me, we worked together for a time at GE.

I love your site, this story struck a cord with me. My family had friends that lived on either side of the wall. When I graduated from school (bareley) my parents took me on a trip to Germany about 1989-1990 for a graduation trip. The "Wall" had just fallen. It was a pretty awesome time to be there. I was too young/stupid/Americanized to appreciate it. The native Germans relatives we were with were able to take us into many E. German sites not available to most. It was like a WWII movie. They would only give the Americaners a 12 hr. visa.

To get to the point to support your pictures and post, I remember looking at a very nice looking church from the West side of the gate and then when we passed through the Brandenburg (sp?) side of the gate we saw the back of it just as it had been left bombed out back in the 1940's. I saw many other examples of this. I did get to drive a Trabant. Sadly, I think it might have been better handling than a Smart Car (not so good for the enviroment).

The people were all very freindly, all spoke almost perfect English, maybe better than me, and were so excited about their new freedom.

I wish we had that excitement here!

Let's keep in touch,

Tom A.