Youth under the banner of freedom

I really wasn’t a child anymore when the Berlin Wall fell. I grew up in the GDR and as a 12-year-old, I followed with wide eyes all of the developments that swept across Europe in 1989. The Hungarian border was opened. Thousands of GDR citizens fled to the West German embassy in Prague and endured for weeks living in tents and mud. Following a speech by the West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, they were allowed passage to the west. There were demonstrations all over the country and finally, the wall came down. On January 15, 1990, my parents took me along to see the infamous storming of the despised “Stasi” headquarters in Berlin, which was located only two blocks away from our house. Freedom of travel would be the principle on which I would base the rest of my life. When I was 14 I went to England for the first time to take a language course. At 16 I went to Florida for a year as an exchange student. When I was 21 I spent a year studying at the University of Texas. And today I live and work in Buenos Aires Argentina, teaching English and German.

You can see my parents, my little brother and me in the picture. It was taken on November 11, 1989, in Berlin-Britz, where we were waiting to receive a small amount of money as a welcome to life in the west. The picture was taken by my mother’s cousin, who lived in West Berlin, and still does today.

Sent by: Adina from Argentina
Edited by: Kerstin Boljahn