Towards the end of the Second World War, many Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians fled their homes to avoid the second Soviet occupation. They created strong exile communities and continued the struggle against the occupation of the Baltic States. One form that this struggle took was the organization of protests. Divided Germany was a symbol of the Cold War,
but from 1961 the Berlin Wall was a symbol of the Iron Curtain. The Wall was created to stop people escaping from East Germany to West Berlin. Ironically, the West Berlin side of the Wall became the "largest canvas in the
world". Many of the paintings were directed against the Soviet regime, and some of them were created by exile Latvians.