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Marino, Andy. Escape from East Berlin. Scholastic, 2022.

Haddix, P. Margaret. Uprising. Simor & Schuster, 2007.

“Triangle Shirtwaist Fire: AFL-CIO.” AFL, aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-events/triangle-shirtwaist-fire. Accessed 19 May 2023.

Written by Andy Marino        Review by Linda Harris Sittig. “Escape from East Berlin.” Historical Novel Society, 29 Oct. 2022, historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/escape-from-east-berlin/.

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Uprising
By Margaret Peterson Haddix

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire | History

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https://aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-events/triangle-shirtwaist-fire

Article to shirtwaist story and factory fire.

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Looking at the video and image, you can tell that the fire was terrible and started movements toward helping women get better jobs and better job security and safety while working. The women that worked at these factories also didn't get paid well and were treated harshly. This should teach the readers that the world is becoming a better place slowly and we have to help that.

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Table of Contents

1. The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin

2. The Berlin Wall: Blockade and Crisis

3. The Berlin Wall: Building the Wall

4. The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989

5. The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall

On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) began to build a barbed wire and concrete "Antifascistischer Schutzwall," or "antifascist bulwark," between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep so-called Western "fascists" from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West. The Berlin Wall stood until November 9, 1989, when the head of the East German Communist Party announced that citizens of the GDR could cross the border whenever they pleased. That night, ecstatic crowds swarmed the wall. Some crossed freely into West Berlin, while others brought hammers and picks and began to chip away at the wall itself. To this day, the Berlin Wall remains one of the most powerful and enduring symbols of the Cold War.

The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin

Berlin's Animal Arms Race

As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany's territories. They split the defeated nation into four "allied occupation zones": The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) France.

Even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the eastern and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements split the city into similar sectors. The Soviets took the eastern half, while the other Allies took the western. This four-way occupation of Berlin began in June 1945.

The Berlin Wall: Blockade and Crisis

The existence of West Berlin, a conspicuously capitalist city deep within communist East Germany, "stuck like a bone in the Soviet throat," as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put it. The Russians began maneuvering to drive the United States, Britain and France out of the city for good. In 1948, a Soviet blockade of West Berlin aimed to starve the western Allies out of the city. Instead of retreating, however, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift, lasted for more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and other goods to West Berlin. The Soviets called off the blockade in 1949.

Did you know? On October 22, 1961, a quarrel between an East German border guard and an American official on his way to the opera in East Berlin very nearly led to what one observer called "a nuclear-age equivalent of the Wild West Showdown at the O.K. Corral." That day, American and Soviet tanks faced off at Checkpoint Charlie for 16 hours. Photographs of the confrontation are some of the most familiar and memorable images of the Cold War.

After a decade of relative calm, tensions flared again in 1958. For the next three years, the Soviets-emboldened by the successful launch of the Sputnik satellite the year before during the " Space Race " and embarrassed by the seemingly endless flow of refugees from east to west (nearly 3 million since the end of the blockade, many of them young skilled workers such as doctors, teachers and engineers)-blustered and made threats, while the Allies resisted. Summits, conferences and other negotiations came and went without resolution.

Meanwhile, the flood of refugees continued. In June 1961, some 19,000 people left the GDR through Berlin. The following month, 30,000 fled. In the first 11 days of August, 16,000 East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin, and on August 12 some 2,400 followed-the largest number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day.

The Berlin Wall: Building the Wall

That night, Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall -the Berlin Wall-that divided one side of the city from the other.

Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed the East-West border to work, to shop, to go to the theater and the movies. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. After the wall was built, it became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through one of three checkpoints: at Helmstedt ("Checkpoint Alpha" in American military parlance), at Dreilinden ("Checkpoint Bravo") and in the center of Berlin at Friedrichstrasse ("Checkpoint Charlie"). (Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall.) At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave. Except under special circumstances, travelers from East and West Berlin were rarely allowed across the border.

The Berlin Wall: 1961-1989

The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. (Though he was not happy about it, President John F. Kennedy conceded that "a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.") Almost two years after the Berlin Wall was erected, John F. Kennedy delivered one of the most famous addresses of his presidency to a crowd of more than 120,000 gathered outside West Berlin's city hall, just steps from the Brandenburg Gate. Kennedy's speech has been largely remembered for one particular phrase. "I am a Berliner."

In all, at least 171 people were killed trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall. Escape from East Germany was not impossible, however: From 1961 until the wall came down in 1989, more than 5,000 East Germans (including some 600 border guards) managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds.

The Berlin Wall: The Fall of the Wall

On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party announced a change in his city's relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country's borders. East and West Berliners flocked to the wall, drinking beer and champagne and chanting "Tor auf!" ("Open the gate!"). At midnight, they flooded through the checkpoints.

More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist wrote, "the greatest street party in the history of the world." People used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall-they became known as "mauerspechte," or "wall woodpeckers"-while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. "Only today," one Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, "is the war really over."

The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on October 3, 1990, almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

HISTORY Vault: Declassified: Rise and Fall of the Wall

Mine formerly guarded vaults and archives around the world to reveal untold stories about the brutal life and catastrophic death of the Berlin Wall, a central symbol of the 20th century's longest and deadliest war.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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On August 13, 1961, the Communist government of East Germany began to build a barbed wire and concrete "Antifascistischer Schutzwall," or "antifascist bulwark," between East and West Berlin. The official purpose of the Berlin Wall was to keep Western "fascists" from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.

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Escape from Easter Berlin
By Andy Marino

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Escape From East Berlin
By Andy Marino

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Uprising
By Margaret Peterson Haddix

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The book starts with a character named Bella who goes to America to find money to feed her family back in Italy. She finds out that she has to work at a Shirtwaist Factory with many other girls and they work all week with low pay. There is also Yetta and Jane who will later live together and they all face tough lives except for Jane who was rich, but then decided to leave home and fight for rights they all work together, strike, help each other, and live lives that are meant to give women rights. Sadly, in the end, Yetta and Jane die from the fire and Bella is the only one that lives to tell the story, Bella remembers her friends by naming her children the names of Yetta and Jane.

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What are readers supposed to learn about the experiences of the past?

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https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/escape-from-east-berlin/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/16/escape-from-east-berlin

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This article talks about the Berlin Wall in Germany in the 1960s and what was happening and how many of the people on the Eastern side tried to leave and go to the better Western side.
While the Eastern side was controlled by the communists at the time, the Western side was much better with America and France, and many thriving nations helping the Western side grow. The split happened after WWII. The wall was up for nearly 30 years and split up the two sides of Germany and fell around the 1990s. Finally, the article also talks about how many people in Germany wanted to escape the Eastern side and wanted to go to the better Western Side.

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The book Escape From East Berlin by Andy Marino clearly describes the time when East and West Berlin were separated. The book has 4 sections that are about 2 different people, they are Marta and Kurt. The readers should learn things about the experiences of the people that went through in the past: some people's lives can change drastically when they don't even know it. Many people do not know about the experiences of people in the past. They should read this book and learn more about other people and their experiences of the past, like what people went through during the separation of East and West Berlin.

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The people of the time relate to the book because many people tried to escape from East Berlin throughout the 1960s to 1990s and the article relates to what goes on in the book. The book even though it is a bit different with different perspectives of the characters, it still shows the struggles and ideas that were going on at the time of the Berlin Wall escape. Both characters try their best to escape, and their parents go to jail.

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“He remembers sitting there while his mother read to him from books that Frantz burned in a giant barrel in the weed-choked yard behind their apartment block”(Marino 68)

“My mom used to have a keyboard and some sheet music- he even threw that away” (Marino 68)

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The photograph depicts the brick wall that separated East Berlin and West Berlin, connecting it to the book Escape from East Berlin. This book provides an overview of the reasons behind the creation of the Berlin Wall. The second article also shares the same perspective as Escape from East Berlin. The photo itself illustrates the severity of the wall's impact. The wall was so notorious that even Martin Luther King Jr made a speech there, proclaiming "We are all one in Christ Jesus, for in Christ there is no East, no West, no North, no South, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole, wide world."