New Berlin Wall Memorial Inaugurated

A new memorial to the victims of the Berlin Wall was inaugurated on the grounds of Germany's lower house of parliament, Berlin's Bundestag, on Thursday. The monument is made up of segments of the original wall, erected along the former borderline which separated communist east from capitalist west Berlin between 1961 and 1989. Berlin artist Ben Wargin has painted each segment with a series of super-imposed numbers, representing a year and the number of people killed trying to cross the border from the east. Among those gathered for the unveiling of the monument at Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders House, the parliamentary library, was the
Bundestag's outgoing speaker Wolfgang Thierse. Parts of the Berlin Wall can still be found in the German capital which has seen several monuments, notably at Bernauer Street, spring up since the wall was demolished in 1989 as the communist regime of East Germany was toppled.