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Father Tim Jones recalls memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall (From York Press)
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Father Tim Jones recalls memories of the fall of the Berlin Wall
7:48am Tuesday 10th November 2009
AS WORLD leaders gathered in Germany last night to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one York priest relived his own experiences of travelling to the city in November, 1989.
Father Tim Jones, priest in charge at St Lawrence’s Church, in York, was among the first Britons to arrive in East Berlin in the days after the wall came down.
He was visiting the city as a 22-year-old history student at the University of York to attend a conference about the contribution young Christians could make to the changing political situation in Europe.
Father Jones, now 42, had previously spent five years in west Berlin from 1975 to 1980, so knew what it was like to live in a city divided by the Cold War.
He said: “My dad was a teacher in West Berlin during the 1970s, so I had grown up there and understood what the Berlin Wall was all about. The city was still in uproar when I arrived two or three days after the Wall had come down. There was a sense of euphoria and confusion, joy and shock. You would be walking along and there would be people sitting in doorways in floods of tears.
“I remember getting to the Wall and seeing somebody sitting astride of it and feeling my knees go weak because, as a child, we had had it drummed into us that we never climbed on to the wall because you were likely to be shot.
“To see somebody sitting on the wall gave me this physical response, as if somebody was about to be executed.”
A total of 239 people died attempting to cross the Wall and escape to the West between 1961 and 1989.
Father Jones said: “I remember going to the border and seeing families being reunited. Everybody was in tears and hugging each other. There were just thousands of people pouring into west Berlin.
“Crossing through to the east, I had a taste of what it was like to live in a Communist country. I was waiting to catch a train and was dog tired after my journey from the UK so I put my feet up on the bench and bent my head over to get a couple of minutes’ sleep.
“These two armed soldiers came up to me and ordered me at gunpoint to take my feet off the chair and sit up straight. It was just bizarre.”
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Your Say YourPress
Hieronymous, York says...
4:38pm Tue 10 Nov 09
Father Tim Jones, who was in Berlin at the time the Wall came down
Father Tim Jones in 1989
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pedalling paul , York says...
9:50am Tue 10 Nov 09
Through the Wall at Marienborn into the GDR. Then into West Berlin at Greibnitzee. Finally over the Wall, on a long viaduct into East Berlin at Freidrichstrasse. I chanced a photo at Marienborn, which I still have, of the border police preparing to check a westbound, steam hauled passenger train.
A couple of years ago, I was sitting on the site of the wall at an outdoor Berlin cafe by the River Spree. What an amazing contrast.