 "Photo: Caleb Bryant Miller/The Daily Texan")
Decorated cardboard boxes with graffiti and German phrases saying “Unify Germany and families,” were stacked on the plaza in front of the UT Tower on Monday night to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The departments of Germanic studies, history and government, as well as the centers for European, Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian studies in the College of Liberal Arts organized and sponsored the event to honor the revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall and celebrate the anniversary of its fall.
The event also included a memorial to Kristallnacht, which marks the night of Nov. 9, 1938, when the Gestapo and Hitler Youth carried out the torching of Jewish communities in Germany. It was the most shocking night for German Jews in the 1930s, said professor Robert Asbin.
News reels of the eviction of Jews from German neighborhoods and Nazis handling crowds played while students, community members and faculty viewed the student-made wall.
“Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolize the worst and best we can see in history,” Asbin said. “Even though there are echoes of the past in Neo-Nazi demonstrations, wounds are healing.”
Challah for Hunger, a program within The White Rose Society, a Holocaust remembrance and genocide awareness group, provided bread for the event.
“It is also a night to remember what happened at Kristallnacht,” said biology junior Jason Meschin, co-chairman of the UT chapter of Challah for Hunger. “We need to recognize the fact that genocide is not just in the past, and there are still atrocities that need our immediate attention.”
The event began with a candle-lighting ceremony and ended with students tearing down their wall of change.
Mariana Ivanova, the instructor of the class called Tear Down This Wall!, had her class prepare a timeline spanning from before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 to after the fall of the wall in 1989.
Ivanova said through protests from East Germans, people saw others could bring change. This caused a wave throughout eastern Europe, which eventually caused the end of the communist bloc.
Judith Atzler, a Germanic studies graduate student, said she thought of the idea for the event to bring a part of Germany to UT students.
“The fall of the wall symbolized freedom of speech and to move around, because people in East Berlin were not able to travel,” Atzler said. “We can all work together and change the world like the people of East Berlin.”
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