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What? Communism? Cold War?

Roger Cohen's piece in the IHT may make for odd reading, but that Cold War still spoken of doesn't seem to be across the radar of German youth.

Cohen explains:

"It's now 18 years, a generation, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, so I thought I'd ask some post-wall German high school kids about communism. The subject seemed about as riveting and relevant to them as, say, the Holy Roman Empire.

"Communism? What's that?" said Ricardo Westendorf, 17, a student at the Carl-von-Linné school in what was East Berlin. "I think we talked about it in a history lesson, but I was ill."

Three other students, born in 1989 and 1990, emitted withering sighs, the kind reserved by kids for parents who can't get computers to work. Their teacher, Heike Krupa, 45, who lived through communism and its East German police enforcer, the Stasi, was taken aback: "I'm a bit surprised they seem to know nothing about it."

I'm not. Time has accelerated since 1989 as the barrier-breaking in Berlin has been succeeded by Internet-propelled wall jumping on a global scale. Just six letters distinguish the words "communism" and "computers," but the supplanting of one by the other has transformed the world.

Felix Blanke, 17, another student, said he spent up to 20 hours each weekend on his laptop, holding group conversations via TeamSpeak or using MySpace. These kids' friends are scattered from the Philippines to Seattle.

"For our parents, it's all East or West, but for us it's Germany and the world," said Pia von Cossart, 17. "They don't realize their stories about the old times are boring."

Yes, the Cold War is boring. It's old stuff. But, for the record, here's how these students came to live free lives."

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