What an awesome story! I really mean that.
When I was growing up there was a little boy, and his mother was ALWAYS close by when it came to almost anything. She walked him to school, and walked him home. This woman was basically attached at his hip, and we never knew why. We just accepted it. Where ever he was there - his mother was too. This was elementary school for me.
I will never forget the day we were all lining up by class to enter our elementary school, and for whatever reason someone asked her about her constant presence. She told us of escaping Germany with her family, and the Wall at that point wasn't done...but was being built at the time. Her family decided it was time to escape. She stood there telling us of the day they were shot at by machine guns it sounded like, and knowing they were leaving everything behind. Poverty and not knowing the future, but as a child she told us she didn't realize fully the scope of that. I got the impression she wasn't much older than we were - although she was older. I will never forget the fear she spoke about, and the risk for freedom that her family took. Her hiding at certain places as they were shot at, and then wondering if everyone will make it. They all knew someone could get killed. Many before had been killed. It was escape now, or they could they could lose their freedom forever. History didn't turn out that way of course, but they didn't know that at the time. I don't know if she lost someone, because after her story no one had the courage to ask. She ended the story rather abruptly, and wouldn't go on. It was the way she ended it that made us worry. It did make many of us wonder. We were kids, and were to scared to ask in that atmosphere to her to go on.
I thought of her that day when the wall came down. I wondered if she was able to reconnect with family, friends, etc. I wondered how she was. We had a friend that lived on the free side of Germany, and he was a Taxi driver. He was coming over for Holiday within months, and I asked him if he drove by the wall. He picked up a piece of the wall for me along with some the barbed wire that was within the cement. He came to the USA, and he hot glued it to a piece of plywood at friend's house. He wrote in German on a piece of paper about the location, date, etc. I still have it. It's a sorry looking thing, but it hangs on a wall. His memories aren't as clear to me about his experiences as a child during that time (yes he spoke of it too), but it certainly was a HUGE deal then.
It reminds me of North Korea today. The walls and borders that keep those people in, and they have no way of escape. If they can to China? They truly risk everything if they are caught, and sent back. If they left family behind? They are dead meat pretty much. There is no mercy there. Mercy wasn't high on the Priority list on the wrong side of Germany either. At least at that time in history.
It's amazing to me that people lose the point of the commemoration. Walls have different purposes, and I can picture today WHY a North Korean mother would follow their children to school, back home, and shadow them basically just like that mother did to many years ago. I hope to live to see the day that wall and border come down. That would be worth the money to engrave the rock and send it to the country that helped accomplish that. I pray one day it happens. I will never forget that woman that was truly traumatized by her childhood experiences of them trying to keep them in Germany. It's strange to me how history allows people to forget though. I guess it isn't a priority in History class anymore.
