The Berlin Wall, 20 years gone – The Big Picture

I was a freshmen in high school in 1989.

What I remember most about that moment is not the continuing coverage from our three national news networks, but a visit from two West Berliners in my World History class. We were talking about the sweeping changes in Eastern Europe. It was the last week of October. And I asked them if they thought the wall would come down. I remember how quiet the room got when I asked the question. I remember the look of controlled hope and sincerity behind their eyes. One of them responded and said, ‘Dear God I hope it does.’

Some in my class didn’t believe it was possible. When they left, I said to someone, ‘that wall is coming down.’ We’d taken many history classes together, class trips… most of the kids in my freshmen World History class had been in classes with since Golda Meir Elementary. We debated what we understood of world affairs between periods and lunch. We had studied much history together. American History, the Cold War, World War 2, transatlantic slave trade, pogroms. Some of my classmates remained skeptical.

Three weeks later, Jeremy runs to class saying to me, ‘You called it! You called it! How’d you do that? How’d you know it would come down?’ I can’t say now that I knew anything. Now, I can only say that people dream in a common language. And if you saw the truth in the eyes of those two West Berliners in my class in the fall of 1989, three weeks before East Berliners took sledgehammers to concrete, you’d know it was coming. All I can say is that in that moment, I felt the urgency of now, the change that was coming and bent toward the arc of history and watched walls come tumbling down.