The record
A fragment lying under glass in an opened suitcase, in a peace museum founded by Esperantists in Soviet Uzbekistan.
The Esperanto Friendship Club was one of the first Esperantist associations founded in the Uzbek Soviet Republic, in the early 1980s. True to Samarkand's history as a trading city on the Silk Road, the small circle around Anatoly Ionesov built up a network of correspondents around the world, and in 1986 — the International Year of Peace, and with the tolerance of the state authorities — opened the International Museum for Peace and Solidarity. The initiative remained unique after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. The museum joined the International Peace Bureau in Geneva and the association of peace museums founded in 1992, and was given the honorary title of people's museum in Uzbekistan.
Its collection runs to more than twenty thousand objects from over a hundred countries, and among them is a lump of the Berlin Wall, sent as a gift by the Friedensbibliothek-Antikriegsmuseum in Berlin. It lies under glass in an opened suitcase, with a photograph of the donor standing in front of the Wall beside it.
The display is the point of the record. Elsewhere in this catalogue the Wall is stood upright and lit, as a monument to itself. Here a piece of it is presented as luggage — something that was carried out of a place, by someone, and arrived.
How did it get here?
A gift from the Friedensbibliothek-Antikriegsmuseum in Berlin.
Sources & verification
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, site entry ↗
The founding of the Esperanto Friendship Club around Anatoly Ionesov, the opening of the International Museum for Peace and Solidarity in 1986 and its later memberships and honorary title, the collection of more than twenty thousand objects from over a hundred countries, and the Berlin Wall fragment given by the Friedensbibliothek-Antikriegsmuseum, displayed under glass in an opened suitcase with a photograph of the donor.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Source accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 264
Last verified: Not yet verified
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