We’re all children of our histories. Some of us become victims, others reactors and rebels. Some of us just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Commemorations, celebrations and memorials become important, documenting what is, what was and what might have been.

Germany commemorated the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall last week. That wall wasn’t as lengthy as the Great Wall of China, nor did it have the mythic significance of the wall that Joshua’s trumpet brought down at Jericho. But the Berlin Wall marks a significant milestone in the history of the Cold War, when a supposedly civilized nation locked in its people and described it, in the Orwellian rhetoric every government bureaucrat could envy, as an “anti-fascist protection rampart.”