2008-11-24 John F Kennedy Assassination Commemoration

Commemoration: November | 22 | 1963: John F Kennedy shot dead in Dallas.

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J F Kennedy in Berlin (here at an University), 1963: "Ich bin ein Berliner."

Just like a lot of other old people, I can still picture the rememberance of that day, when Kennedy was shot in my mind. My parents and I still lived in a small apartment in one of the outside districts of Vienna, in a so called 'Zimmer-Küche-Kabinett-Wohnung'.

After being in primary school for 4 years, then in 1963 my first year at the 'Gymnasium' started (absolved it successfully in 1972).

In the kitchen on a board was this tube-radio, an 'Eumigette'. We had no TV. The normal radio broadcast was interrupted with the news, that J F Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas, Texas.

As a child I felt the shock and sudden uncertainty of my parents and sensed that they got kind of hurt by these news too. I felt their 'Betroffenheit'.

It looked to me, as if a certain period of hope had quitted and that new uncertain times would begin. As I mentioned, 8 years later I finished my courses at the gymnasium, that was the time of the Vietnam war.

More on the assassination, John F Kennedy and the BBC News of that day.