Bridges are better than walls

Sixty-five years ago, August 13 was a dark day in the history of Germany. The country was divided since the end of the Second World War, and the “Iron Curtain” separated people in West and East Germany. But as if that wasn’t enough, the socialist regime of the so-called “German Democratic Republic” erected the Berlin Wall to separate the German people even more. The official name of the wall was “Antifascist Protective Wall”, but the truth was that the regime wanted to hinder East Germans from fleeing to West Germany. I had a cousin who tried to escape, but he was caught and spent two years in prison for attempting to flee from the GDR. When I grew up in West Germany, I thought that the wall would not fall in my lifetime, but a few weeks after I immigrated to Canada, on Nov. 9, 1989, thousands of East Germans stormed the Berlin Wall, and that was the end of this ugly structure, and one year later Germany was officially reunited. It is sad that some countries, like Korea, are still divided, and there are divisive forces in the USA and even here in our beautiful Canada. We should focus on being united, because in a divided world we will only be strong if we are united. We don’t need more walls, but we need more bridges and have to overcome our differences.

‍Arnim Joop 
Publisher & Editor
mwmosaic@telus.net