On this day in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Eckhartz Press publisher Rick Kaempfer took this first picture in 1976 from West Berlin looking into East Berlin. It was one of the scariest places in the world at the time. There were land mines in the ground, snipers standing watch. Lots of people were killed trying to escape to the West.
The bottom photo was taken just a few weeks after the Wall began to fall in 1989. That’s Kaempfer and his brother playing around by a wall that had scared them so much just a little more than a decade earlier.
Author Lou Macaluso wrote a great book about the Berlin Wall last year called The Greatest Escape. He appeared as a guest on Kaempfer & fellow Eckhartz Press publisher David Stern’s podcast, Minutia Men. In this episode, Lou tells about an elderly couple who managed to escape from Berlin during the height of the Cold War. It’s worth a listen if you are interested. The interview begins at 21:41.
Leave a Comment