post videos/audio files/text passages from historic events that have had an emotional impact on you. I hope the mod(s) will allow stuff at least from 9/11/01 since it's probably the one 'historical event' everyone has experienced regardless of age.
To get the ball rolling here are 2 clips on the fall of the Berlin Wall, first maybe the most iconic:
[Until the edge of the 30th September 1989]
Quote:
4500 East Germans had taken refugee on the area of the West-German embassy in Prague, Czech Republic, with a view to be permitted to leave for West-Germany []. The video shows the West-German foreign minister at that time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, standing on the embassy's balcony and telling the refugees that their departure permission had been negociated.
Translation:
"We're trying for a solution, but I don't want to give a statement now. First I'd like to speak to the Germans from the GDR who are currently at the embassy."[B]
"We have come to you to tell you that today, your departure..." (rest is drowned in cheers)
The iconic part being obviously the 2nd, starting at about 0:10. Being German I love the '(rest is drowned in cheers)', obviously. I cannot help but smile at it.
I was a young boy at the time and coming home from school to find out which ships had been sunk and battles had taken place seemed pretty exciting. A young guy who went to my school fought and died over there in what was really a needless conflict (the falklands)
Im likely turning this into a German history thread but this might seriously be the most remembered, most important picture in its history after '45:
to grasp its full meaning read the wiki entry on Willy Brandt's 3rd Reich history, particularly the bolded part:
Quote:
Kniefall von Warschau (German for "Warsaw Genuflection") refers to a gesture of humility and penance by social democratic Chancellor of Germany Willy Brandt towards the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.[1]
The incident took place on December 7, 1970 in what was then the communist People's Republic of Poland during a visit to a monument to the Nazi-era Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After laying down a wreath, Brandt, very surprisingly, and to all appearances spontaneously, knelt. He remained silently in that position for a short time, surrounded by a large group of dignitaries and press photographers.
Brandt had actively resisted the early Nazi regime, and had spent most of the time of Hitler's reign in exile.