Lech Walesa opened Freedom Gate for Belarus

• 24.08.2009, 15:15

Lech Walesa, the Nobel Prize nominee and former Polish president, unveiled the Freedom Gate on the Belarusian-Polish border.

As Radio Svaboda reports, the monument contains a fragment of the Berlin Wall and bricks taken from the Gdansk Shipyard, the birthplace of Solidarity movement.

The gate bears the dates 1989–2009 and an inscription with the words of Pope John Paul II, who said: “Solidarity means one with another, so it can never be one against another.”

According to Lech Walesa, it is very symbolic that the Gate of Freedom Gates of Freedom is located along a major route leading to the border with Belarus. According to the concept of the authors, the monument in the geographical center of Europe reminds about the changes that had led to the fall of communism in Europe and about the fact that Europe doesn’t end on the river Bug.