Berlin Tours Day Three

Today was our last day with our tour guide in Berlin. We started the tour with a tour of the Berlin Wall. I was really amazed at what I heard what people did to try and escape. I mean the first death that happened when the wall went up was that a woman tried to jump out of her window to the western side of Berlin with her mattress. I just cant imagine how much people wanted to get out of a place that was really oppressive to them. Also we also heard about a group of people that ended up digging a tunnel from one side of the wall from their apartment in the east all the way to the other side. I mean I know that it must have took them a really long time to be able to do that. It just shows that the ones that were under the oppressive rule would stop at nothing to be free. The second thing that we did was take a tour of a part of the berlin Wall that had been painted with graffiti on the east side. When I was walking along the wall I was so amazed at the art work that was created along the wall. I mean I know that It must have been very hard for those who did put graffiti on the walls to do so due to the soldiers watching them. But I believe that the messages that were put on those walls all that time ago still have meaning today. In the U.S. we have the freedom to express our feelings, and for a place like Eastern Germany, that was under communist rule to have things like that done really amazed me. I mean I bet all of those who did do the art had to be in fear of major prosecution and even death for just expressing themselves. The last place that we toured was a Stasi Prison. This was very moving for me due to the fact that we had a tour guide who was actually imprisoned during the Cold War. The prison was constructed to house those who were deemed as enemies of the state of Eastern Germany. We were told that there were 17 of these prisons throughout Germany. The ones that committed the worst crime against Eastern Germany were those who smuggled people from East Berlin over to the West. This Is what our tour guide did and because of it, he ended up in one of these prisons. He was trying to smuggle out his sister and her fiance when he was stopped and got caught doing so. So because of this, he was sent to one of these prisons that were kept secrete from the public. He went on to tell us about how he was interrogated similar to that of which we saw in the movie "The Lives of Others." Parts of that movie were actually filmed in that location. Because of seeing that movie and then going and meeting someone had to live through it firsthand it is really amazing to me that people would go to such great lengths to make sure that their loved ones were not in any harms way of the oppressive government.