Word: berlins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...central bankers and finance ministers who gathered in Berlin last week for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank encountered more than the usual round of interminable speeches and parties. While the world's top moneymen jawed away inside the International Congress Center, outside in the streets legions of leftist demonstrators chanted, "IMF, meeting of murderers!" At one point, policemen carrying Plexiglas shields and billy clubs broke up a boisterous crowd of 2,000. Another day, 75,000 marchers paraded peacefully. While the protests did not disrupt the conference, the bankers knew what they symbolized...
...Olympic flame arrived on the exuberant arm of Sohn Kee Chung, 76. In 1936, a year of Japanese colonial rule, Korea's great marathoner sagged on the Berlin victory stand to be wearing the wrong uniform and hearing the wrong anthem. This time he fairly bounced around Seoul's stadium. Among those who helped shuttle the sparkler to Sohn were several American sportswriters who had misplaced their cynicism in the excitement of the city. At Inchon, John Jeansonne of New York's Newsday hit an invisible speed bump and took an incredible header, but with an Olympian effort kept...
Wearing T shirts and jogging shorts, they seemed like any other young East Germans enjoying a summer afternoon. Suddenly Maigda Adryan, 22, and three male companions clambered over two fences, plunged into the sludgy river Spree and began swimming to freedom from East to West Berlin...
Adryan was not so lucky last year. A native of Potsdam, 15 miles from East Berlin, she had been arrested when she tried to flee from Czechoslovakia into West Germany. Granted amnesty after spending several months in detention, she decided to try again after becoming pregnant in May. "There was a danger they might take my baby from me and put it in a state home," she says. "I knew we had only one alternative, and that was to try to escape." In July she and her fiance, Thilo Koch, 18, and two friends conducted practice swims during a camping...
...East Germans have escaped over the Berlin Wall this year, six by swimming across the Spree. What made last week's exploit so remarkable is that Adryan and company plunged into the river at one of its most heavily guarded points, and in broad daylight. Perhaps, as they had hoped, the presence of so many Western tourists, including an alert British visitor who videotaped the entire escape, deterred the guards from shooting...