Posted at: 11/09/2009 7:03 PM
By: David Springer

Print Story  Email to a Friend

Locals Remember Fall of Berlin Wall

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- Twenty years ago today the infamous Berlin Wall came down. For many of us, those images will never be forgotten. But for those people who were actually there, the memories are still very much alive.
 
"An instance, an issue, a time slot like that only occurs once and you have to be quick enough to enjoy it, to record it, and remember it,” says Chops Hancock.
 
20 years ago, Chops Hancock was all three. The now Winona State University photographer, was working in Germany when the Berlin Wall came down. He says, along with these photos, he brought back nearly 40 pounds of the wall…a piece of which still sits in the office of WSU's president.
 
"You know the wall was a great place for people to write their frustrations or take their frustrations out," says Hancock.
 
Two decades later The Wall is nothing more than a history lesson to most college students. But not all...
 
"I don't think everything is all butterflies and rainbows,” says Annelie Schmittel.
 
Annelie Schmittel was only a year old when The Wall came down. The WSU student moved to the U.S. from Germany when she was 16 and says there's still some resentment between what was East and West Germany.
 
"I think what many people in other countries don't realize is that there is still a big division, I mean.  Obviously I was just a year and a half, almost two, but you can still tell now,” says Schmittel.
 
Still Hancock says 20 years later; the images of the wall coming down and its remaining fragments are reminders of the struggle for freedom. 
 
"And freedom is something that is a universal word even though it's spoken in different languages. It's a word that we all know what that means," says Hancock.