had no voice. It was a time of oppressive silence and paralysis. However, all of this changed in October 1978 with the election of a Polish cardinal as Pope. His faith and his words alone unsettled the intolerant regimes. Firstly, the Polish people and then the whole world realised that this man said what he believed and believed what he said. John Paul II was the first conspicuous sign of the winds of change which would blow across Europe from then on and which, in 1989, would become a storm of upheaval.
(Loud applause)
The strikes in Danzig in 1980 and the founding of the first free trade union in the Eastern bloc made it clear that a process had been started that could no longer be stopped. The decisiveto open its borders.
(Applause)
It was a time when people acted on behalf of one another, because of their longing for freedom. This upheaval was a genuine joint effort and its most important result should and must be a lasting European community. Therefore, we should see these experiences as a challenge to search in Europe from now on for the things which unite us.
(Applause)
I will not forget how John Paul II in his speech at the Brandenburg Gate in 1996 said, looking back, that people had been separated from one another by walls and lethal borders. In this situation, the Brandenburg Gate in November 1989 bore witness to the fact that people were shaking off and destroying the yoke of oppression. The closed Brandenburg Gate stood as a symbol