Excerpts from Letters to Mom in italics.
Summer in Germany is a "wunderbar" time. The weather is gorgeous. So much to do and to see. Back home in the US of A, southern officials were busy resisting integration, and in Vietnam the repressive policies of our ally, the Diem brothers, were causing widespread demonstrations and the ultimate in civil protest, fiery suicides. It was so nice to be in Germany; John Kennedy concurred.
On 26 June 1963, in the midst of a ten-day European visit, President Kennedy delivered his famous speech by the Berlin Wall concluding "Ich bin ein Berliner!" AG2 Fehr was on duty that day, but the speech was carried live on radio. Everybody listened; radios were tuned to the President in every part of that sprawling, secretive enterprise. The German audience roared repeatedly during the short speech to the Berliners. Kennedy was the most popular person on earth at that time and Fehr was proud and happy to be basking in the reflected glory of his Commander in Chief.
Although the Berlin speech was interrupted with frequent applause and cheers, especially as JFK worked the audience adeptly building to those final four words, hearty cheers erupted too when he stated repeatedly, "Let them come to Berlin." Kennedy isolated the great issue and hammered the point home:
Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner."Emphasis added.I appreciate my interpreter translating my German! [Laughter]
There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin.
There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.
And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.
And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.