SECRETARY KERRY: Toria, thank you very much. Welcome, everybody, to the Ben Franklin Room
of the State Department. Friends from Germany and intrepid leader Fred Kempe, Bill Harrop,
and all the generous contributors to the Diplomacy Center, as well as to our brilliant seventh
and eighth floors, we are deeply appreciative for your generosity. And special guests, everybody
– it is really wonderful to see you here. This afternoon, I want to joint Assistant
Secretary Nuland in welcoming our very distinguished and special guest, President Joachim Gauck.
I also thank all of you for joining us here today as we officially take into the Department
of State a very tangible – and if you’ve seen it downstairs; I hope you had a chance
to, and that’s why we’re running a little bit late. I apologize; we were down there
admiring the section of the wall. But it is a very large piece of history, and such relics
of the past are obviously priceless. Speaking for myself, I’d much rather view one than
be one. (Laughter.)
My friends, in receiving this unique – this unique symbol and memorial of the wall itself,
the Berlin Wall, we at the same time pay tribute to an indelible partnership between two great
countries. And inevitably, we think back to an era when an event like this was literally
beyond belief. We recognize now even more than we did in
1961 that the building of the Berlin Wall was both an act of hostility as well as a
humiliating admission of defeat. From ancient Rome to medieval China, we know of civilizations
erecting barriers to keep adversaries out, but never before had a government found it
so necessary to brick their citizens in. Almost 26 years have now passed since the
wall was brought down by courageous people on both sides. Today, pieces of the barrier
can be found in every corner of the globe, from Australia and Argentina to Canada and
South Korea. This Department is blessed to have a place, the U.S. Diplomacy Center, where
we are able to receive and display historic gifts. And I want to join Toria in really
thanking personally and with deepest appreciation all those of you, whether individuals or corporate
sponsors, who are supporting the center now with your contributions. And I’m not saying
that to encourage you to give more – though, obviously, that is always welcome. But I just
want to say thank you profoundly, without asking for the more.
It’s only because of you that we are able to have events like this, and to receive on
behalf of the department but also on behalf of our country a segment of the wall personally
signed, as Toria just said to you, by those individuals who played key diplomatic roles
in helping to bring it to rubble. These bold leaders include United States President George
H. W. Bush, Soviet Premier Gorbachev, German Chancellors Kohl and Merkel, Polish President
Walesa, Lech Walesa, and former U.S. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.
Now, we’re particularly pleased that Brent was able to join us here today. And I asked
him when he was looking at the wall if it brought back a few shivers, and he said, “Yes,
absolutely.” I know some of you have heard – and maybe
you’ve heard it too often – about the time that I spent in Berlin, a short time
as a young kid. And my father was in the Foreign Service there. He was serving as the legal
advisor to the high commissioner of Germany, James Conant. And I used to – I was about
12 years old, 13 years old, and I loved riding my bike. I did not fall and break my leg back
then. (Laughter.) And I rode it all along the lakes, around the lakes, up and down the
Kurfurstendamm. I remember riding past the Reichstag all burned out, riding back by the
Fuhrer’s bunker that had been blown up, and the Brandenburg Gate, and all of these
great memories of that time. And I was curious. And one day I exercised
the privilege of a diplomatic passport and I rode through the checkpoint into East Berlin.
And though still a child, I really could tell immediately – and I found it very foreboding
– the difference between the east and the west. The east was drabber, darker; the clothes
were darker. There were fewer cars. There was a grayness. And I felt this sense of something
that actually frightened me, and I turned around pretty quickly and went back. I didn’t
linger long. I had the choice of going back. A lot of people,
obviously, did not have that choice. And many people lost their lives trying to exercise
it later on. Even as I was pedaling around East Berlin that afternoon, families like
that of Joachim Gauck were living outside the circle of freedom.
In fact, the future president’s father was a prisoner in a Soviet gulag. That searing
experience helped to make of his son a true democratic champion, a gutsy activist, and
a leader referred to in the files of the East German secret police as “an incorrigible
anti-communist.” The highest praise indeed. (In German/via interpreter) President, thank
you that you have come here. Your presence here is not just – shows that will it not
only have a geopolitical game that was being played; it was also a major tragedy at a time
where many people who loved peace and freedom, and many menschen were – many people had
to live and were silenced. Nobody is going to know better how many good and courageous
people died during the effort to fly across the Berlin Wall.
Thank you for being here. Your presence brings home to us the fact that the Cold War was
not some sort of a geopolitical game. It was a terrible human tragedy in which millions
of freedom-loving people were persecuted, imprisoned, and forcibly silenced for the
better part of a lifetime. No one will ever know for certain exactly how many good and
brave people perished while trying to get over or through the Berlin Wall – the actual
number. But today, as we look back almost a quarter
of a century after German reunification, we can take unbelievable pride in the relationship
between our two nations which had forged through decades a healing and a building. To the United
States, Germany is a trusted ally, a partner, and a friend. And to those of us here today,
it is a privilege and a pleasure to welcome the revered president of our great ally Germany,
Joachim Gauck. (Applause.)