Living in Germany after the years of WWII wasn’t easy for anybody especially for the people who had to life in the lost provinces of Germany.  By the 1980’s Germany was looking to recover those lost provinces, they were mainly looking to regain the GDR, the eastern part of Germany, which had been taken over by the Communists after WWII.  And in 1989 the People of Germany did get their wish, they started to tear down the dreaded wall.  My father, Roobik Melikian, was in Germany when the Berlin Wall fell and is sharing the happenings in Germany at that time with me.

 

        Living in West Germany was an easy life to live compared to the lives of the people in Eastern Germany from the 60’s to the 90’s.  In East Germany everything was falling apart because of the communists.  The Communists denied things to the people in the GDR that the people of West Germany had in their every day lives.  Of course they were all looking for money and work but they also wanted uncensored information and media.  The GDR was also very behind in technology many didn’t even have a TV set.  Many sought better lives in West Germany but few were able to cross over.  Some people were allowed to do so, but only a few made it over.  I think that there was only one opening in the wall, at Berlin. You know the wall ran right through Berlin and the city was divided into two. 

 

       In the late 80’s people started talking about taking over the GDR and tearing down the wall after the communists had left.  Germany bought East Germany back after almost half a decade of communist rule.  Germany paid a lot of money for East Germany but it was a terrific moment when it happened.  Germany would not be complete today if the Communists hadn’t screwed up and been desperate to sell it over to Germany.  They were going bankrupt and Germany got their chance to purchase it from the hands of the communists.  The Russian head of State at that time was Gorbachov, he was the person that agreed to sell the GDR to Germany, and without him it couldn’t have been possible so the Germans were very grateful to him because of that.

 

       When the People heard about the fact that Germany had bought the GDR in ‘89 they started to tear down the wall themselves.  The whole nation was stirring.  Everybody was happy about it and everyone was celebrating, the whole nation was holding a big party for almost three days after they had torn down the wall. We saw fireworks almost every night and we celebrated by going to bars and staying out late every night. 

 

 

       During this time people form the former GDR got to walk into West German soil and be reunited with long lost relatives or friends.  It was all over the German news and I imagine the world news as well.  It was a glorious day for humanity; it really moved me to see people come together like that after such long and hard times.  Western media groups also explored the former GDR after the wall fell.  We saw images of the horrible places where people lives and the desperate lives they had in Eastern Germany. 

 

     I wasn’t in Berlin when it happened but our neighbor was there.  He had traveled to Berlin to be one of the first to welcome his relatives to West Germany.  He was a man named Mr. Straus and he had been our neighbor at the time when it happened, he had relatives in East Germany since he had lived there almost half a century ago.  His parents had escaped to West Germany sometime in the late ’60 and he had never returned.  He told me that he had had a great deal of relatives in East Germany but that he hadn’t seen them ever since.  He only knew of his very old uncle who lived in East Germany and he was going to go see his as soon as that wall had dropped.  When Mr. Straus returned he told me that he had found out about his many other relatives but most of them had already passed away after such a long time.

 

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Interview conducted by Lili Melikian
Special Thanks to Roobik Melikian
pictures ã Corbis.com
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