Hello, welcome to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Tom

Willes.

I'm taking you back to 1963 when then US President John F. Kennedy made his historic

Ickbennine Bellina speech at the height of the Cold War.

26th of June 1963, Kisella Morailteeman, a student in West Bellina, was looking

forward to an event that was preoccupying the whole city and much of the rest of the

world.

It was a big news in all of Berlin that the young President Kennedy would

visit Berlin and also would come to the University.

I then was in the age of 19, I think, and so it was clear that I had to be there.

I think that almost everyone I knew wanted to be at this event.

Bellinas were acutely aware of being at the centre of a geopolitical battle.

After the Second World War, the city had been divided between the Soviets in the East

and the United States, Britain and France in the West, even though the city

lay 160 kilometres inside the Soviet occupied territory that would become East Germany.

The face of West Bellin was a contentious question in the Cold War

between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, a simmering conflict that frequently threatened

to erupt into all out nuclear war.

The Americans wanted to keep their foot hold while the Soviets wanted to see the

entire city under communist control.

As Socialist East Germany struggled economically, millions of unhappy citizens left the

country via the capitalist island of West Berlin.

...