Dinphy's ScrapSpot: German Division

Danyale (Etc. by Danyale) has yet another new kit out!

Military Day by Day

And a journal set to make it easier to Tell Your Story.

Well, I think it's THE perfect kit if you have a loved one in the military!

Which... I don't.

;)

And STILL it's an awesome kit to scrap with.

I just had to put my thinking cap on, but soon realized I DID have a LO I really wanted to make, and this kit was just perfect for it!

It turned into a 2-pager, as I had too much stuff to put on just one page.

Journaling reads:

I grew up with the given fact that East and West Germany were split. A border between them, and people and families split up. I learned a bit about it at school. It was terrible for the people. Later I heard the news of the wall coming down, and saw some of it on TV. But all these things, although I thought they impressed me, did not really, deeply do that. The feeling was more that You were taught to be impressed, to have respect. It was not something that came from the inside.

Last year, while visiting our friends, we also made a trip to a memorial site, with part of the border still there.
Just a half hour drive, and I wanted to see it for myself
There, I got more of the feeling of what it must have meant for the people living there,
and I got impressed. From the inside. From just imagining and understanding the tiniest bit of what they must have felt, and what it must have been like.

One of the things that got to me was the story behind the
Birch Cross.
Erected to the memory of two men who attempted to escape at this place at Christmas 1975. They had almost reached their goal when one of them detonated the splinter mine, which had been installed on the last border-fence. He was so seriously injured that for a long time everyone was certain that he had not survived. His companion was arrested.
This all happened before the very eyes of the Americans, but they were not allowed to intervene...
Today the birch cross represents all those who had become victims of the German division.

The border between East and West Germany
To be honest, when I first saw this I thought, is this it? This wire-like fence? I expected a wall, like in Berlin. Then I got to think, and it hit me that people could SEE, the other side, but never were able to reach... See the land, the houses of your friends and family... And it should feel like you could just touch it... But you couldn’t. How hard must that have been?

It’s good they have photo’s of how it was back then. As the green fields surrounding the border now, don’t give you the same feeling as the border with members of the East German border troops on the photo from the mid 1980’s.