Dispatch from Berlin

A nation with a very dark past provides us some hints for contending with our very dark present.

I was starting to be aware of the world around me roughly at the time the Berlin Wall was being erected. As an eight-year-old, I had no grasp of its significance in world affairs, but I knew from the somber tone of Walter Cronkite’s voice whenever he spoke of the wall that it wasn’t a good thing. The words “Checkpoint Charlie” carried an ominous message. I knew, as well, from the furrowed brows of my parents that there was something to be feared, vague though it might have been.

Some 28 years later, I was considerably more aware of the world when the Berlin Wall came down. It meant that the city could begin its reunification and that the specter of Communism that people of my generation had been raised to fear was beginning to dissolve, at least insofar as the Soviet Union was concerned.

So as I’ve walked around Berlin, I had moments of awareness t…