The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall

http://www.newsy.com/videos/reminiscing_the_fall_of_berlin_wall
Here is the transcript:
Twenty years have passed since the Iron Curtain has fallen in Germany, along with the Berlin Wall.

While people in Germany celebrate the 20th anniversary of the wall’s collapse with a “Festival of Freedom” on Nov. 9, media outlets across the world are revisiting the historic event and re-telling the stories.

Newsy.com brings you perspectives from The New York Times, France 24, Deutsche Welle, Euronews and CBS.

First, Deutsche Welle looks back to the event known as “the peaceful revolution" that led to the destruction of the wall.

“A policy of nonviolent protest bonded East Germany’s opposition groups and eventually led to their success, as one East German official put it, ‘the regime was prepared for everything, just not for candles and prayers.'”

Euronews also takes us back to the night the border was opened, through the memories of a border guard.

“I am no hero. I’ve done the what was the only right thing to do on that evening back then. For everything else, we have to thank the citizens of the GDR, who stood in front of us. Well, there’s one thing I can take credit for, that no blood was shed that evening, just tears of joy and cold sweat, nothing else.”

CBS News takes a look at the key players involved in the event of the wall coming down.

“Then, Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev had refused to back the desperate GDR regime. Then President George Bush refused to gloat as the wall came down. Then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl went on to become the leader of a reunited Germany, an outcome neither he nor any of the others had planned, but one that now they say could not have happened without them.”

France 24 presents a web documentary, bringing insights on chronological events from the German division to the end of the German Democratic Republic.

Finally, the New York Times presents an interactive graphic that shows Berlin in 1989 and 2009.

Internet users can compare scenes from the city before and after the destruction of the wall.

A writer examines Germany in this day and age.

“Between opposing the Iraq war and contributing to the defense and reconstruction of Afghanistan, and trumpeting its strict recycling programs and booming solar-power industry, Germany is trying to shed the ghosts of its past and may be succeeding.”

So what can you remember from the time the Berlin was brought down? Tell us your stories.