BERLIN: Germany has kicked off celebrations marking 25 years since the epochal fall of the Berlin Wall, set to culminate in rock stars and freedom icons joining millions at an open-air party.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, is leading three days of commemorations for those killed trying to flee the repressive state, ahead of a giant festival Sunday marking the joyous breach of Europe's Cold War division on November 9, 1989.
"I think you never forget how you felt that day -- at least I will never forget it," Merkel, 60, said in her latest podcast.
"I had to wait 35 years for that feeling of liberty. It changed my life."
The festivities under the banner "Courage for Freedom" recall the peaceful revolution that led communist authorities to finally open the border after 28 years in which Easterners were prisoners of their own government.
Germany would reunite within the year, on October 3, 1990.
The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose "perestroika" and "glasnost" reforms helped pave the way for the Wall's fall, on Friday greeted crowds at Berlin's iconic former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing.
US President Barack Obama told the world to remember lessons from the emotional fall of the Berlin Wall.
"I will never forget the scenes of East Berliners courageously taking to the streets, pushing past the guards and tearing down the wall that for so long had separated them from family and friends and the free world," Obama said in a statement.
"As Russia's actions against Ukraine remind us, we have more work to do to fully realize our shared vision of a Europe that is whole, free and at peace," he added.
Relations between Russia and the United States are at their iciest since the end of the Cold War after Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in March.
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