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The Checkpoint Charlie Museum: One of Berlin’s Most Touching Monuments

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I love Berlin. For my money, there’s no cooler city in all of Europe. Berlin is a thriving modern melting pot of alternative lifestyles, international influences, and art. Still, you can’t – and shouldn’t – visit Berlin without being aware of its history. For decades, the division of Berlin by the Berlin Wall represented the epic struggle between communism and capitalism to define the economic systems of the western world – it also demarcated a real divide in the daily lives of East and West Berliners.

Many former East Berliners will tell you that living in East Berlin wasn’t so bad. Many of them say they had no real desire to leave East Berlin permanently. The problem, according to them, wasn’t communism or economic deprivation – in fact, unemployment in East Berlin was virtually zero. The problem was the lack of freedom to travel: to take vacations, see other parts of the world, experience a weekend in Paris, or simply see family who happened to live in West Berlin.

As an avid traveler, the human yearning for freedom and experience strikes a chord in me, so the most moving part of my trip to Berlin was visiting the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Checkpoint Charlie was the sole point of crossing between East and West Berlin for foreigners and Allied Forces. The small but densely-packed museum that is now housed in the checkpoint is a beautiful monument to the human determination to be free. Photographs, stories, newspaper clippings, and artifacts document the many attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, of East Germans trying to flee the restrictive and controlling policies of communism.

The museum contains stories of impressive bravery and touching selflessness, such as those of the West Germans who drove East Germans across the border hidden in secret compartments in their cars. There are stories of cool planning, like that of the young woman who lay on the luggage rack of a train, hidden away in two modified suitcases, until she crossed the German border into France. And there are stories of almost impossible daring, like the East Berlin doctor who used a bow to shoot a line over the Berlin Wall and then slid his family to safety using makeshift harnesses.

Not all of the stories end happily. Many who tried to escape were caught, and many were killed. In time, even the cleverest schemes were found out, and became impossible to use. Some of the brave and selfless people who helped others escaped didn’t make it out themselves. I stayed in the museum until it closed, thinking of the people who risked so much to have the basic right of freedom of movement that I take completely for granted.

Whether East Berlin was all that bad or not, one fact that can’t be denied is that the rate of alcoholism in former communists countries – including East Berlin – is significantly higher than in countries that remained capitalist. Whether the material standard of living provided by communism and capitalism differed that much seems to some extent a moot point in the face of the overwhelming evidence: material well being is insufficient in the absence of possibility, aspiration, experience, and other immaterial goods.