Liberator to many, traitor to a few

BERNHARD Voss fights back tears when he thinks of the gift of freedom he and his fellow east Germans were granted when Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the Berlin Wall to be swept away.

Soon after the last Soviet leader's death, people on Berlin's Karl Marx Allee thoroughfare running through the east of the reunited capital paid mournful tribute to the late reformer and statesman.

"I am very moved," Voss, 64, said, wiping his eyes.

Standing in front of the furniture store he has owned for 15 years at the foot of the two Stalinist-era towers that open the avenue, Voss was overcome with emotion remembering the man who quite simply changed his life.

"When the Wall fell, it was a liberation," said the lifelong Berliner.