It was 30 September 1989 when then-West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher announced from a balcony at the Prague embassy that East Germans would be granted permission to travel to West Germany by five special trains arranged for transport. This was the beginning of a mass exodus which resulted in the Berlin Wall finally coming down on 9 November.

It followed Poland's first free post-war elections in May of that year and the cutting of barbed wire along the Hungarian-Austrian border in summer. In August, large numbers of East Germans camped out near Lake Balaton, a resort and spa area in the west of Hungary. It was so common for East Bloc denizens (as well as Austrians and Germans) to vacation there, it didn't really even look all that suspicious, but they were biding their time, having heard rumors of border openings. As Deutsche Welle notes in recent reportage, many of the locals told them which lookout towers were likely to go unused.

The breakthrough was the Pan-European Picnic, in the woods near Sopron, Hungary, an event co-sponsored by Otto von Habsburg, the last crown prince of Austria-Hungary, and reform-minded Communist parliamentarian Imre Pozsgay. There were rumors, once again, of a border opening: according to the Deutsche Welle article, Hungarian guards checked the documents of Austrian citizens, while ignoring the East Germans pouring through into Austria - about 700 in number.

More and more "Ossies" attempted the escape into Austria, and in September many others went to Prague - entering West German territory by jumping the fence into the embassy compound. These are the people Genscher is addressing.

The Pan-European Picnic and the events at the Prague Embassy were two crucial leadups to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. 

I posted last year on the Feast of St. Wenceslas, Patron of Bohemia. Since I have so many ties to the Czech Republic, I'm doing it again. This time I’ve got new info, on a church built in the saint’s honor for the millennium of his death in 1930. As many times as I’ve been to Prague, I must confesse I’ve not visited it - so, new bucket list item!

The Tres Bohemes website, a good source for all things Czech – and some Slovak – does a better job than I can, so I’ll refer you to them here.

Also, September 7 was the four-hundredth anniversary of the deaths of three priests executed during the uprisings led by Gabriel Betlan in what was then Hungary, in today's East Slovak city Košice, the second largest municipality in the country. They were canonized by John Paul II during his visit to Slovakia in 1995. (I was living in the country at the time, but did not see the pontiff there, though I did see him in the Vatican the year before while traveling with a Slovak chorus.)

There were several special Masses for the occasion. The St. Cecilia choir I sang in from 1996-97 performed at one of those events, held in the "Premonstratensian" church which was built on the site of their martyrdom. I've sung with the group in that church in several concerts there, as well as for the wedding of one chorus member.

​Curiously, none of the three martyrs was Slovak: Marek Križin was Croatian, Štefan Pongrác Hungarian, and Melichar Grodeckzý Polish. As a spokesman for the diocese recently pointed out, this fact symbolizes the supranational position of the Church. And in another sense, all three were Košice people, so all the town's citizens can be proud.