Some years back a socialist told me that the Berlin Wall was to keep westerners out of East Berlin. I told him that I'd visited the Wall in 1969, passed through it and had a tour of East Berlin, seen the Wall museum, been on the platforms overlooking the wall, had East German guards wave at me, etc.

In a sense it is both good and bad that the Wall has been erased, people forget what it was like. Nobody should forget.