By 3 News online staff
Former British soldier John Harris was in Berlin on August 13, 1961 – the night East German troops began erecting the wall that would divide the city for 28 years.
Mr Harris, a member of the 'Green Jacket' regiment who now lives in New Zealand, vividly remembers the moment half-a-million soldiers from the Soviet-run eastern side descended on the border with 1500 tanks.
The wall they constructed, just under 200km in all, completely isolated West Berlin from the rest of Germany, splitting up families and preventing many people from being able to get to work.
"I saw young teenagers that had come over to West Berlin to enjoy the weekend, and overnight the wall went [up]," Mr Harris says. "Now they had a choice – go back to East Berlin and never come back again, or stay here and never see their parents again."
It is estimated up to 200 people died trying to cross the wall.
The fall of the 'Iron Curtain' began on November 9, 1989, after months of mass demonstrations against the Soviet Union in the east and a decision by authorities there to open some of its borders to East Germans trying to leave as refugees.
Over the following weeks, people began demolishing large parts of the wall, creating new unofficial border crossings. The process was expedited by East German bulldozers and the military began officially dismantling the wall on June 13, 1990, formally finishing the task on October 3, 1990.
On the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr Harris talks to Jane Luscombe about the night the troops moved in.
Watch the full interview in the video player above.
3 News
source: newshub archive
