In August 1961, the world woke up to the fact that a wall was suddenly erected to stop the mass exodus of people fleeing communist East Berlin for the freedom of West Berlin and the non-Communist world. The [[Berlin Wall]] was a mass of concrete, barbed wire, stone, and later, land mines, that cut into the heart of the city, separating families and friends. For 28 years, it stood as a grim symbol of the gulf between the Communist East and the non-Communist West; nearly two hundred victims lay dead in its shadow, gunned down by border guards to keep them from escaping.
Two years after it was built, President [[John F. Kennedy]] made an a historic speech at the wall on June 26, 1963, questioning the thoughts and motives of people "...who say that Communism is the wave of the future." "Let them come to Berlin," was his answer, so they may see for themselves just what communism, symbolized by the stark presence of the wall, was really about.
==Text of "Ich Bin Ein Berliner"==