Why We Must Fight Back

I’m not sure which exhibit it was at the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin that brought me up short, but it was during my visit there last November that it dawned on me why I do what I do. Was it the photo montage of Jutta Gallus, the East German mother who was forcibly separated from her two young daughters for several years and who protested at Checkpoint Charlie every single day during that time, finally being reunited when she won their freedom? Or maybe it was the exhibit of the two windsurfing boards mounted back to back atop a car in such a way that a person could lie between them invisibly in order to escape from East Berlin? Maybe it was the photos of Peter Fechter, the 18-year-old man who was shot going over the Wall and died over the next hour, lying there, screaming for those nearby to help, nobody able to do anything as they, too, would be shot.

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