Witness History Folgen

In 1989, a picnic was held on the border between Austria and Hungary, as a demonstration for peace and European integration. It prefigured the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union and finished with hundreds of East Germans escaping to the West through the Iron Curtain. In 2011, Rob Walker spoke to one of the organisers, Walburga Habsburg Douglas.(Picture: A leaflet from the Pan European picnic. Credit: Getty Images)

In 2002, the Eritrean government extended its programme of compulsory national service to make it open-ended. Instead of serving 18 months as the government had originally decreed, most students finishing secondary school would be conscripted and forced to remain in government service indefinitely - either serving in the army or in civilian jobs. The Eritrean government said conscription was necessary because the recently ended war with neighbouring Ethiopia could break out again. But the prospect of working for the state for an indefinite period, without a proper salary, prompted many young Eritreans to begin trying to escape to neighbouring countries and to Europe. Over the past 20 years hundreds of thousands have left. It’s an exodus that continues to this day. Rob Walker speaks to Semhar Ghebreslassie who began her national service working as a teacher in 2008. This programme contains descriptions of sexual violence. (Picture: Eritrean migrants. Credit: Getty Images)

A Brief History of Time, the best-selling book written by the renowned theoretical physicist Prof Stephen Hawking, was published in March 1988.In this programme first broadcast in 2018, Louise Hidalgo talks about physics, existence and the universe that made the book so popular. The editor who published it, Peter Guzzardi, is her guest. (Picture: Prof Stephen Hawking. Credit: Getty Images)