Nov. 8--Twenty years ago, Natalia Spektor stood at a hotel registration desk in Italy when a radio in the lobby broadcast news that the Berlin Wall was coming down.

Tired from three weeks of traveling -- from her native Ukraine, through Austria, enroute to the United States -- Spektor, a Russian Jew, was shocked to hear that the communist barrier would open for the first time since 1961. She carried only two suitcases of belongings and had just $105 worth of Russian rubles in her pocket, but she could not have been happier.

She knew, with the fall of the wall, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union loomed on the horizon.

"It was a big shock to all of us," Spektor recalled. "We understood that some revolution was coming."

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is an important date to Spektor and many immigrants who left Eastern Germany, Russia, Ukraine and other communist countries to settle in freedom at the end of the Cold War era.

"We're happy that we came here," said Spektor, 61, a partner in the Gourmet Market, a European grocery store on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill. "It was absolutely a different life."

For many, the route to safety and freedom was paved by President Ronald Reagan, who in a June 12, 1987, speech asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to destroy the barrier to achieve peace and prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," Reagan said before thousands of people standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.

Finally, on Nov. 9, 1989, Reagan's pleas were answered as the world watched in awe.

Around midnight, crowds gathered on both sides of the 12-foot-high wall that cut through the heart of Berlin, dividing families, cutting off commerce and slicing transportation routes for nearly three decades. As people celebrated the end of travel restrictions, armed border guards -- freed from previous shoot-to-kill orders -- were unable to hold them back.

The gates opened.

In the days that followed, people scaled the wall and chipped away at concrete with hammers and crowbars, taking souvenirs and destroying the wall in sections. Germany was reunited officially on Oct. 3, 1990; the Soviet Union split apart into independent nations the following year.

"The fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the few German events that had worldwide impact because it put a stop to the communist advance to the rest of Europe," said Dr. Marianne Bouvier, executive director of Pittsburgh's Institute for German American Relations.

Bouvier said bringing the wall down was a joint German-American effort, adding that "without America's help, it might never have come down."

David Murdoch, a partner in the Downtown law firm K&L Gates and Pittsburgh's honorary consul of Germany, has been a student of German history since 1957. After the wall fell, the collapse of communism cleared the way for the development of business relationships between Eastern European and Soviet nations and the United States, he said.

Pittsburgh always has been a popular destination for German companies because of its location and talent, Murdoch said. Many companies hired talent from local firms when the region's steel mills closed, he added.

Today, 70 German-owned firms employ about 11,000 people through more than 140 businesses in the region, according to Global Pittsburgh, an organization that promotes the region's cultural, educational and business relationships with other nations. Bayer, with more than 2,600 employees, and Siemens, with about 1,300, have the largest presence here, the organization reported.

"Location, location, location. Pittsburgh is within an hour and a half flight time from an enormous part of the population of the United States," Murdoch said. "There's terrific population market exposure, which is attractive to foreign investors."

The fall of the wall helped even the smallest investors, such as Spektor and her business partner, Anatol Risov, find prosperity in America.

For the past 15 years, the partners have sold European food, candy and delicacies to immigrants longing for the tastes of their homelands. Coolers and shelves in their corner store hold boxes, bottles, jars and tins labeled in Russian, German and other languages.

On a recent weekday, Spektor debated the merits of different coffee brews with an Israeli customer who bought a jar of dried onions, some sliced meat and a bag of eight pickles. The women, in broken English thick with a native accent, talked of favorite foods at the counter lined with newspapers and magazines printed in Russian.

Spektor said she misses much about the Ukraine, where she and her husband and two children lived comfortably, but not well. They had jobs and an apartment, but her 19-year-old son tried twice to get into a university and was turned down by the communist regime, she said.

Her son wanted to make the move and the rest of the family -- including his 17-year-old bride -- left with him, she said. They received financial help for travel and housekeeping expenses from Jewish organizations in Israel and the United States.

Spektor said it was the best decision they ever made because her son, a graduate of Boston University and Boston Medical School, is a doctor in New York.

"It's hard to let go of the culture," said Spektor, who became an American citizen a decade ago. "I had to learn English when I was 40 years old, but I am so happy that I am here."

Now and then, though, her mind floods with warm memories of their former home.

In observance of the historic anniversary, she and others who came to the United States in 1989 took time to remember their old culture with an event Saturday night. They celebrated at the Mirage Banquet Hall, where they ate European foods, danced and shared memories.

"This is to remind us of how we were," Spektor said.

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