Latest update: 10/11/2009 

- Berlin Wall - Nicolas Sarkozy - Press review


Nicolas Sarkozy caught exaggerating his role in the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

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Two walls tell two different stories. One, Nicolas Sarkozy’s Facebook Wall. The other, the Berlin Wall. The French president says on the first he was there when the second fell, on the 9th of November. It seems that's not quite the truth.

IN THE PAPERS
By Luke BROWN

 

The French President claimed on his Facebook Wall that he was in Berlin the night that the Wall came down.
 
He even published a photo of himself, chopping at what he says is the East side of the wall with a pickaxe.
 
Well, as the French left-leaning daily Libération points out :  it may be in Berlin. But when?
 
Many accounts show that Sarkozy COULDN’T have made it to Berlin on the Evening of the 9th of November 1989
 
Indeed Berliners themselves only discovered it relatively late in the evening, leaving Nicolas Sarkozy very little time to fly from Paris Berlin. While the free-circulation of people from East to West he describes only began in earnest on the 10th and 11th of November.
 
The Photographer who got the shot says it was taken on the 10th, a day later than according to Sarkozy.
 
While he may have made it to Berlin … at some time after the fall, Liberation’s anecdote shows that the French president has a rather loose grip on truth.
 
Apparently, Nicolas Sarkozy is one the few people who can’t quite remember exactly where he was on the night of Fall of the Berlin Wall.

 

 

 

If you want some more details on the stories that we covered in the French press review, here are the links to the webpages.
 
Berlin, a united Europe. But where was Obama?
Communism may have fallen with the Wall, but capitalism is far from perfect.
Security agent, folkhero, Robin Hood ?
France’s young poker champion
 

 

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