Trying to Erase the Past...

Last Monday was the 20th anniversary of the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. This 10 foot barrier divided families, life styles, and cultures. It was the epitome of the Soviet isolationism and the firm grip it had on their citizens (any “Bourgeois customs”, such as washing your car, could get you arrested). People were not allowed to cross the border, so they would sneak across, by hiding in the trunks of cars, catapulting themselves across, or even building homemade planes. While the Western half of the city progressed in sync with the Western world, the East was still stuck in the post World War II age. The city lay in ruins from the war and technology, from cars to radios, dated back to the 40’s all the way until the 1980’s.
A few summers ago, I visited Berlin and walked across the border that once dived East from West and could not tell the difference. East Berlin has assimilated and has morphed into the West. If my father had not told me the differences of what separated the East form the West he saw when he was living there, I would have never noticed. The German government has done so much to help modernize the East to catch up with the rest of Germany, and have done such a good job that the only thing that seperates the two halves of the city are little “Berlin under Soviet Control” museums that you see when you walk through the East.
German history isn’t the most fabled, or the most morally right in the world, so Germany has made the effort to erase their past by pretty much rebuilding an entire half of their city and discourage any toys with a connection with the military. BBC had done interviews of many young Berliners to see what they knew about the Soviet control of Berlin and an overwhelming number of them couldn’t answer any of the questions. I can see how Germany is ashamed about their past, and I understand how they want to have a city like the other flagship European metropolises, but to attempt to erase recollection of the past is hard to handle. If we did erase all the bad things man has done in history we would find that history does repeat itself because we would never learn from the mistakes. We shouldn’t try to forget the past, but we should learn from it. We need something to grow on and sometimes these tough lessons are our tool to grow from.