The specially-recorded 2 minute video was played at a conference in Rīga and is reproduced above, complete with English subtitles (though you may have to endure a couple of ads first).
"The Baltic Way was a moving and crucial staging post on the journey to freedom and democracy," said Merkel, who herself grew up in Communist East Germany, and noted that the Baltic Way happened before the Berlin Wall came down and contributed to the feeling throughout central and eastern Europe that allowed democracy to be reborn in many countries where it had been suppressed.
"It shows the values on which Europe is founded," the German leader says.
