The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2019 69 unrecognizable—a sea of construction cranes, with the wall oblit- erated. City authorities’ wisdom in marking the wall’s path in the pavement helped us get our bearings and provided the spot for Brian to pose for his now-and-then photos behind the Bundestag. U.S. policy efforts beginning in 1989 stand as the high-water mark of modern American diplomacy, and I will forever be proud of having contributed to these achievements. I am thrilled that Brian’s entry into our life gave me the chance to see the breaching of the Berlin Wall firsthand, and to retain a personal memory of the destruction of the structure that defined the second half of the 20th century. Michael Dodman was sworn in as U.S. ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania on December 2017. A career Foreign Service officer, he was assigned to Warsaw as an economic officer on his first tour when the wall fell. What Followed Elizabeth Corwin Warsaw, Poland I n 1989 I was the assistant cultural affairs officer in War- saw and in a long-distance relationship with a colleague in Bucharest. We got together every six weeks in Warsaw, Bucharest or elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain. Over Veterans Day weekend, we planned to meet in Berlin, but my partner changed his mind and came to Warsaw instead. I’ll never forget waking up on Sunday morning, turning on my shortwave radio and hearing on the BBC that the wall had fallen. I was crestfallen that we hadn’t been there. On Christmas Day, however, my partner and I spontaneously met in Berlin as the embassy in Bucharest was drawn down the night before. We had a wonderful few days watching “Ossies” streaming over to the West to buy TVs and other goods, and visiting the East ourselves without the Stasi following us. The last half of 1989 and the first half of 1990 are a blur to me. The Polish Communist Party had lost every open seat in Parlia- ment in June 1989, and all departments of the U.S. government opened up their wallets, offering training programs and send- ing experts in every field imaginable. The first computer was delivered to the Parliament’s library, courtesy of the Library of Congress. The U.S. Information Service executive officer created special treaty paper for the Ministry of Education so that they could sign an agreement with the Peace Corps. I found participants for all sorts of new exchange programs in the fields of entrepreneurship, operations management and civic education. The International Visitor Leadership Program went from about 20 participants a year to more than 70 as we sent Solidarity leader after Solidarity leader to the United States. We went from one Eisenhower Fellow to a dozen. Opportunities were limitless. Mostly, I remember working nonstop, 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week until the spring of 1990, when I was able to add a new cultural specialist to the office. I was overwhelmed by the amount of work; the requests for ideas for new U.S. govern- ment programs; the NGOs, American universities and private- sector organizations calling, visiting and writing to inquire about how they could help and what was needed; and, not to mention, official visits by all but one member of the Bush Cabinet and many, many congressional delegations. There were months when my breakfast was a cafeteria- supplied cheese sandwich at my desk, my lunch was a cafeteria- supplied cheese sandwich at my desk, and my dinner was, well, a cafeteria-supplied cheese sandwich that I’d buy at lunchtime and take home. Still, I wouldn’t trade those days for anything. It was exhila- rating to be in such a dynamic environment and to have such resources. It was fascinating to see a society change so funda- mentally, to see economic theory put to work, and to see how creativity and ingenuity can change a culture. In 2009, I was fortunate to return to that part of the world as the cultural affairs officer in Berlin. I was there for the 20th- anniversary celebrations of the fall of the wall, along with Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev and Hillary Clinton. Postscript: Cutting U.S. Information Agency resources in Europe, closing libraries, ending or diminishing exchange programs, shuttering cultural centers—indeed, closing USIA— all because we won the Cold War, has done the United States much harm and may have contributed to the shrinking of individual freedoms and rights currently happening throughout Europe. At the same time, I see values and principles that I fought for and worked on in Poland 30 years ago being stomped on in the United States itself now. Everything seems upside down. Elizabeth Corwin joined USIA in 1985 and retired from State in 2012. She served in Munich, Warsaw, Athens, New Delhi, Mumbai and Berlin. She lives in Tampa, Florida.