“On Nov. 9, 1989, hammers and chisels began dismantling the concrete blocks and barbed wire of the wall that split Berlin, west from east. It was the most famous part of a barbed wire boundary between Communist East Germany and the democratic West.
“This day marks 30 years since thousands of East Berliners poured through checkpoints. They streamed by armed border guards who had no direction to act. They crossed the ‘death strips’ – the space between the double wall where more than 100 people had died over 28 years trying to reach the West, and freedom.
“Let us remember with gratitude the brave dissidents who laboured for freedom behind the Iron Curtain, many at the price of their own lives. And let us salute the vision of leaders like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and St. John Paul II, whose resolve helped to accelerate the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the liberation of the people of Central and Eastern Europe.”