International Focus Magazine Prototype Edition | Page 12

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Anniversary

Sister Cities Movement
Observes a Milestone
by Ellen Israel Goldberg

The sister cities
movement is celebrating its 60th anniversary
this year. It was created as a
result of a White House conference convened by President
Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man of
peace who knew the horrors of war. In
1956—ironicallly, on September 11th —he
invited a select group of people from all walks
of life to find a way of bringing citizens from different countries together.
The world was in the midst of the Cold War.
The term “Iron Curtain” had been around since the
12 iF Magazine | June 2016

1920s, but Winston
Churchill popularized
it during a speech in 1946.
A division existed between
allies of the West who had
formed NATO—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—and the Soviet Bloc allies who created the Warsaw
Pact. Tensions were high and Eisenhower
was eager to find a way to lessen the chance of
a shooting war.
After serving as the Supreme Commander of
the Allied Expeditionary Forces for the European
Theater in World War II, he became President of