Wherever There Are Walls

When Helena Merriman interviewed one of the architects of Berlin's most famous escape tunnel, Joachim Rudolph, his answer startled her. With a knowing smile, he observed that “wherever there are walls, there's someone trying to escape.” The Berlin Wall, he explained, had simultaneously divided his city and united its people in resistance.

From the Great Wall of China snaking across mountains, to Hadrian's Wall marking Rome's northern frontier, to the Peace Walls of Belfast dividing communities, to Israel's West Bank barrier, to the steel fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border - humanity's impulse to wall itself off persists across time and culture. Even today, walls continue to rise. Like India's barrier with Bangladesh, or the electric fences of Hungary.

Today, as nations rush to fortify their borders with ever-more sophisticated barriers, this paradox persists. We invest billions in walls while knowing they've never truly worked—not in Berlin, not in ancient China, not at our modern borders. Yet we keep building them, driven by an instinct as old as territory itself.