As the world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lech Walesa, the co-founder of Solidarnosc, Nobel Peace Prize winner and former President of Poland, wants to share in the celebration, the honor and the credit—and perhaps rightly so.
Walesa was recently interviewed by Spiegel Online and says the collapse of communism really started in the Polish shipyards, in Gdansk.
In the interview published today in the Dutch NRC Handelsblad, he is asked, “Are you looking forward to the 20th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall?
Lech Walesa: It’s not important whether I’m looking forward to it or not. I am a politician who played an important role in the reunification of Germany and I was invited to take part in the celebration. It’s not like a piece of candy handed out to a sweet little boy.
When the interviewer comments, “The guest list in Berlin is an impressive one. Chancellor Angela Merkel is expecting numerous world leaders to attend, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, among others. Surely it is an honour to be a part of it,” Walesa says:
The first wall to fall was pushed over in 1980 in the Polish shipyards. Later, other symbolic walls came down, and the Germans, of course, tore down the literal wall in Berlin. The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for nice pictures. But it all started in the shipyards.
The interview continues with questions and comments on other Eastern European attempts to revolt against the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and on Reunification.
For more on this fascinating interview, please click here.
Photo of gaping hole in the Berlin Wall, with East German guard tower in background, by Dorian de Wind
