On the night of Nov. 9, 1989, the East German government opened border crossings with West Germany, including the Berlin Wall fronting the famed Brandenburg Gate.

After German diplomat Ernst vom Rath was gunned down by Jewish assassin Herschel Grynszpan in Paris, Joseph Goebbels used the incident to instigate the 1938 national pogrom Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), a prelude to the Holocaust.