Today marks exactly 65 years since the construction of the Berlin Wall began On the night of August 12–13, 1961, East German authorities sealed the border, dividing Berlin overnight. Residents woke up in an already divided Berlin. Between 1949 and 1961, about 3.5 million East Germans, nearly 20% of the entire population of the GDR, fled to the West. The simplest and safest route for this escape was the open border in Berlin. Soviet authorities understood that if the mass exodus was not stopped urgently, there would simply be no residents left in the socialist camp. The 155-km wall, standing 3.6 meters high, divided the city into two opposing ideological worlds for 28 years and became the physical embodiment of the “Iron Curtain.” It was a multi-layered “death strip” equipped with hundreds of watchtowers, anti-tank obstacles, highly sensitive alarm systems, deep ditches, patrol dogs, and heavily armed border guards, who were ordered to kill anyone attempting to escape. Officially, 140 people were killed while trying to flee to the western part of the city. One of the most horrific cases was the death of 18-year-old Peter Fechter in August 1962, shot by East German guards, he bled to death in the “death strip” for nearly an hour in full view of hundreds of witnesses from the West who could do nothing to help him.

Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski is asked why it is that the Polish public accepts that the country spends nearly 5% of its GDP on the military: “We would rather eat grass than become a Russian colony again”