“Walk into the spacious entry hall of D.C.’s Newseum, a museum dedicated to free expression and a free press, and you’ll be directed to begin your tour in the basement. There, standing at 2.5 tons each, are eight 12-foot-high segments of the Berlin Wall, whitewashed and blank on what was once the side that faced East Germany, colorful and graffiti-scrawled on side that faced West. Looming over the wall segments is an authentic three-story East German guard tower. Chris Wells, as a senior vice president at the Freedom Forum, the Newseum’s parent organization, traveled to Berlin in 1993 and purchased the eight segments for about $5,000 each (plus shipping). The tower, she said, was a gift to the Newseum, which in return donated $15,000 to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. The Newseum’s current space on Pennsylvania Avenue was essentially built around the wall and the tower.”
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