Crowd of People at the New Border Crossing on Bernauer Strasse (November 12, 1989) Thousands of people pour into West Berlin through an opening in the Berlin Wall at Bernauer Strasse. When the new GDR travel regulations took effect on November 9/10, 1989, hundreds of thousands of GDR citizens were finally able to visit West Berlin and the Federal Republic for the first time in 28 years.