[November 19, 2016] Most of us have been watching of late about college and university students across the United States protesting, conducting “cry-ins,” group-therapy sessions, and similar acts as a response to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s election victory; the epitome of privilege. Students have been, if we look to the past, often on the forefront of positive change against real adversity.
Take for example the story of those who escaped communist East Berlin in the 1960s by digging tunnels under the Berlin Wall. Germans, despite what we’ve seen in post-WWII documentaries about the German “machine,” actually possess many of the core values of Americans (see my series on core values here, here, and here); in particular; liberty and freedom, equality and individualism, and faith in democracy.
The story of those who escaped East Berlin is indicative of their love of freedom more than anything. In August of 1961, the East German government blocked off West Berlin by means of barbed wire and antitank obstacles. Later a concrete wall was erected in addition to other physical barriers meant to prevent East Germans from immigrating to West Berlin.
The publically stated reason why the communists erected the wall was to keep Western “fascists” from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state. But it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.
After repeated failures by university students to escape, they still tried by building other tunnels. “Tunnel 57” is today’s most celebrated tunnel, built by Joachim Neumann and his friends, and named because 57 people escaped through it during the two days it was open before being discovered by the Stasi, the East German secret police.
It has been said that the communist government’s stubbornness and authoritarian rule, unyielding to its citizens’ desires, found its most apt metaphor in the Wall and its fortifications. The Wall had the effect of turning the people of East Germany from citizens of the state to inmates of the state.
This burning desire to escape the dictatorial, socialist government was what drove Joachim Neumann and many other university students to desperation and the tunnel effort. University students can be strong as lessons of history remind us. The current wave of “snowflakes,” as students has been called as a sign of their weakness, do not represent them.
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- Read more on the escape Tunnels at:
- http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/most-successful-tunnel-escape-history-berlin-wall-180953268/?no-ist
- http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/books/review/tunnels-greg-mitchell.html?_r=1