November 4, 2009

RTÉ News: Europe's Revolution - 20 years on

RTÉ News: Europe's Revolution - 20 years on: "I'm in Sopron, a small town on the border. In August 1989 events were to unfold here which both prefigured and perhaps even triggered, or at least accelerated, the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

The Hungarian-Austrian border is 350km long. During the Cold War it bristled with 1,600 armed border guards and land mines. Between 1966 and 1971 the Iron Curtain was reinforced by an electric fence. 'There was an order that if someone tried to cross and if they didn't stop the guard had to shoot,' says Bella Arpad, a 64-year-old former border guard who has met me at the exact spot where the events of 1989 took place."

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