The Freedom Pavilion, opening on April 21 in the former Massie Furniture building on West Main Street and timed to overlap with Greening Up the Mountains, is part history museum, part art experience, part souvenir shop.
The Pavilion’s owner, Jack Jawitz, amassed one of the largest collections of authentic chunks of the Berlin Wall in the U.S.
Jawitz came by the sections in an attempt to support the efforts of his friend, Jay Goulde, to make art more accessible.
“I got interested in the art of the Berlin Wall through (Jay) who was going to do an international peace project out of it,” Jawitz said.
Goulde’s plan was to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall with exhibitions throughout the U.S.
Ten years later Goulde passed away, leaving Jawitz to figure out a new way to share his part of the collection. That gave rise to Freedom Pavilion.
“So I’m kind of spearheading the project and using the Berlin Wall as a way to teach the next generation,” he said.
The exhibition originally opened in Tampa, Florida in 2021, but Jawitz now lives in Jackson County and decided to move the collection to Sylva.
Visitors to the Pavilion enter the exhibit through a replica Brandenberg Gate and are taken from the end of World War II through the Berlin Airlift and the end of the Cold War. The experience uses parts of the Berlin Wall to educate visitors.
The collection includes an exhibition of Rainer Hildebrandt’s wall paintings.
Hildebrandt was an anti-communist activist who founded the Berlin Wall Museum in a building near Checkpoint Charlie. He worked to document the stories of those fleeing to freedom. Hildebrandt hired New York artist Keith Haring to paint a section of the wall in 1986. After the wall was demolished, Hildebrandt collected concrete slabs and hired artists to paint them to preserve the wall’s story.
Like Hildebrandt, Jawitz wants to tell the story.
“I consider myself having stewardship of something much bigger than me,” he said. “What does one do who’s a good steward but find a mission, display it, teach about it and let the world know it’s here?” he said.
The presentation also tells of American dignitaries’ visits to the wall including visits by presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Regan that gave both presidents some of their most memorable quotes.
JFK is famous for “Ich bin ein Berliner,” translated to “I am a Berliner,” said in 1963 in solidarity with Berlin’s divided residents.
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” Ronald Reagan said in 1987 when calling upon the Soviet Union to foster prosperity and stabilization of Eastern Europe.
As for the art and merchandising aspect of the venture, visitors can paint their own section of the wall’s remains to create jewelry or to display. Larger pieces are also available.
Frances Gary Powers Jr., historian and son of the former CIA pilot shot down over Russia in 1960, will attend the opening of the Pavilion.
What is so historic about chunks of concrete?
Unlike two other famous walls, Britain’s Hadrian’s Wall and Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall was not built as a stronghold to repel invaders. The threat of World War II invaders was long over, and Germany was divided between Allied countries and the Soviet Union.
German Democratic Republic, Soviet East Germany, began to raise the wall in August 1961 to keep people in, stopping millions of defections into the West. The wall stood for nearly 30 years separating two political ideologies and more importantly families and friends. The barrier led East Germans to construct creative sometimes desperate ways to defect including jumping from nearby windows over the wall, navigating sewer systems beneath the two Berlins, and gate crashing by means of ramming cars through vulnerable sections or running through what was known as no man’s land risking being shot to death by rifle wielding guards.
At least 171 people died trying to make the escape. Despite the risk, over 5,000 people successfully defected to the West. That number includes approximately 600 border guards, according to the History Channel.
“These people were just like you and me, but they just wanted to have their freedom,” Jawitz said. “Every piece of this wall tells that story.”
On Nov. 9, 1989, East German Communist leaders at last announced that at midnight residents of both Berlins would now be able to cross the border at will.
Crowds joyously flocked to checkpoints. People from both sides flooded the gates crossing over into the opposite sections of Berlin freely, some celebrated with drinks and revelry while others began deconstructing the wall. They brought pickaxes and other tools including bulldozers to bring it down.
Exhibits such as Freedom Pavilion are important to understand impacts of the past, Jawitz said.
“All of our past history our recent history and actually our future is still dictated by the alliances made around the world during this time,” he said.
Nearly a year later, East and West Germany were officially reunified on Oct. 3, 1990.