LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Berlin Wall: West Berlin
built 655 days ago
Tens of thousands of East Berliners heard Schabowski's statement live on East German television and flooded the checkpoints in the Wall demanding entry into West Berlin. The surprised and overwhelmed border guards made many hectic telephone calls with their superiors, but it became clear that there was no-one within the East German authorities who would dare to take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so there was no way for the vastly outnumbered soldiers to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens. In face of the escalating crowd the guards finally yielded, opening the checkpoints and allowing people through with little or no identity checks. The ecstatic East Berliners were soon greeted by West Berliners on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. November 9 is ... considered the date the Wall fell. In the days and weeks that followed people came to the wall with sledgehammers in order to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts of it in the process.
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When the East Germans moved into action on the night of August 12-13, 1961, and sealed the border with barbed wire, the precursor of the Berlin Wall to follow, they caught the West completely by surprise. President John F. Kennedy was aboard his motorboat on the way to lunch on Cape Cod when the word reached him. He turned around and returned home to Hyannis Port to follow events. Britain's Harold Macmillan was hunting grouse and did not return to London for three days to deal with the crisis. Charles de Gaulle was ... on vacation in the countryside and took a week to come back to Paris. The British, struggling with a bad economy, and the French, mired down in a war in Algeria, were not eager for a new confrontation.
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This image of people in West Berlin hitting the wall is presented as east Berliners breaking out. This is not true. The Eastern side of the wall had no graffiti on it but all pictures of people chipping away at the wall show people hitting graffiti covered wall. Less than one year later Germany was reunited.
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The original 12-foot high, three-ton section of the Berlin Wall has been erected the way it stood in Berlin, the graffiti-covered side facing the West and the stark, drab side of the wall facing East. The East side proved a barrier of death or life-long imprisonment for many who attempted escape.
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During the Wall's existence there were around 5,000 successful escapes into West Berlin. The number of people who died trying to cross the wall or as a result of the wall's existence has been controversial. The most vocal claims by Alexandra Hildebrandt, Director of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum and widow of the Museum's founder estimated the death toll to be well above 200 people [2] while an ongoing historic research group at the Center for Contemporary Historical Research (ZZF) in Potsdam has confirmed 133 deaths.[13] Guards were told by East German authorities that people attempting to cross the wall were criminals and needed to be shot: "Do not hesitate to use your firearm, not even when the border is breached in the company of women and children, which is a tactic the traitors have often used," they said. [3]
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Since the Berlin Wall became obsolete with the 1989 opening of the borders between East and West Germany, Berliners have created massive reconstruction, mostly in what was East Berlin. The heart of the city, the Mitte district, was rebuilt, though remnants of the communist regime still remain.
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