Remembering The Fall of the Berlin Wall: November 9, 1989-2009

November 9th will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall - ending the division of Germany into two parts and signaling the end of communist dicatorship in East Germany.

The main celebrations in the city will be at the Brandenburg Gate - the symbol of German reunification in 1990.
Giant dominoes will be toppled to show how Communist governments in Eastern Europe fell one after another in 1989.
Communist East Germany erected the 155km (96-mile) concrete Wall in 1961 to encircle West Berlin.
It was put up to prevent East Germans from fleeing into the capitalist enclave.
More than 100 people are believed to have been killed at the Wall while trying to escape....

Among those invited are French President Nicolas Sarkozy, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

They also will be joined by:

• Former Polish President Lech Walesa, who led the Solidarity free-trade union against the Communist regime

Former Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, whose decision to open his country's borders first allowed East Germans to flee to the West

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who let the nations of Eastern Europe go their own way