Germans celebrate quarter century since ‘Prague exodus’

Germany on Tuesday held a party in the Czech capital Prague celebrating 25 years since East Germans escaped the Communist bloc via the city’s West German embassy.

As the Iron Curtain began to unravel in September 1989, thousands of East Germans crossed the border into Czechoslovakia, the only country to which they could travel visa-free, then scrambled for the safety of the embassy.

“I can still see people, often in a desperate race with the police, trying to climb the high fence of the embassy,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told more than a hundred former refugees who mingled with politicians at the embassy on Tuesday.

“At the end of September (1989), there were more than 5,000 people including 350 children,” he added, recalling the embassy was full of sleeping bags and bunk beds, with some refugees sleeping in tents in its garden.

The West German foreign minister at the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher — who himself escaped East Germany in 1952 — convinced the Communist regime to accept the mass exodus.

On September 30, 1989, he stepped onto the embassy balcony and told the refugees they were finally free, a famous sentence that was drowned out by a chorus of cheers.

“That was the happiest moment of my political life and a moment of a great gratitude. It’s unforgettable,” the 87-year-old Genscher said after meeting refugees on Tuesday.

About 15,000 East Germans fled to the West via Prague before East Germany opened the infamous Berlin Wall dividing the city on November 9, 1989.

The entire Soviet bloc crumbled within two years.

It was “not only the stellar hour of German history but also Europe’s stellar hour,” Steinmeier said of that September a quarter century ago.

But he warned that “nothing can be taken for granted, given the setback in the eastern part of our continent,” referring to the deadly Ukraine crisis.

“We are not merely looking back… at the event that triggered new developments which ended the conflict between the East and the West and led to the unification of Europe.

“It’s a great joy, but also an obligation. We have to keep fighting for this unified Europe,” Steinmeier said.