Grandpa's Trip to Berlin

My grandpa climbed up the steps of the Berlin Wall, something that others are shot at for attempting. Escorted by Russian soldiers, my grandpa crossed from West Berlin into East Berlin for a long two hours. Only days earlier, he was back at home in the United States. Even he was in fear of Russia and their threat of overpowering europe and potentially America as well. He was working for the Dupont Company. His boss was asked by President Kennedy to establish Radio Free Europe, a broadcast into Russia about good things happening in Western Europe. RFE was to interview refugees who came out of Russia. My grandpa traveled from Washington D.C. to Seattle to raise money for this broadcast and was also backed up by the CIA, who assured my grandpa that he would make it out of Berlin safely. So in the mid-1960's, he got on a plane and arrived in Germany, which he described as a very scary place. "West and East Berlin was like day and night." In West Berlin, where RFE headquarters were located, there were shops, cars, and people roaming the streets; it was a prosperous area. After he climbed the steps of the Berlin Wall, he saw nothing, literally. He describes East Berlin as being "vacant; no people, no cars, no shops, no life." In the Eastern part of the city, there was no freedom, food, or technology. The people were poor and helpless because Russia had bad ambitions. He returned from Berlin safely and continued working on the project, but for even at home, fear still existed. But nothing beats standing at the top of the Berlin Wall.