TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/092589/09258900.038

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 11.9 KB | 228 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 30

REFUGEES

The Great Escape


By allowing thousands of East Germans to flee to West Germany,
Hungary infuriates its Warsaw Pact ally. But how will the new
arrivals fare?

By Jill Smolowe


    Historic moments are often tame and unspontaneous affairs,
played out in marble halls amid the flutter of flags and the
trumpeting of national anthems. Pen is put to treaty, palm
grasps palm in a handshake of newfound understanding and -- pop!
-- a burst of flashbulbs records the moment for posterity. But
as the cold war winds down, history is offering up startling new
images that bear none of the hallmarks of traditional
statesmanship. Last week history was made amid the flutter of
colorful balloons, the sputtering of rattletrap Trabants and
Wartburgs and -- pop! -- the burst of champagne corks. It was
the Great Trek Westward, and as East Germans headed for new
lives in West Germany, the world witnessed a unique spectacle:
an East European country defying its Warsaw Pact brethren and
openly collaborating with the West to aid and abet refugees in
their flight to freedom.

    The dramatic stampede of more than 14,000 East Germans into
West Germany last week followed Hungary's decision to grant the
refugees passage across its border with Austria. The ensuing
crush marked the largest mass exodus from behind the Iron
Curtain since the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. True, the
flow was a trickle compared with the hemorrhage of 3 million
East Germans to the West between 1949 and 1961. But this time
there was the remarkable sight of Hungary bucking its Communist
ally to assist the East German refugees in their quest to begin
new lives in a capitalist nation. To open its borders, Budapest
suspended key paragraphs of a 1969 bilateral treaty between
Hungary and East Germany that forbids the unauthorized passage
of citizens of either country into third countries. Budapest's
bold maneuver provided the West with a vivid glimpse of
fractures within the Warsaw Pact -- and raised unnerving
questions about the refugee tide that might ensue if the Iron
Curtain was completely dismantled.

    East Germany responded to the crisis with maximal rhetoric
and minimal action. It trained much of the heat on West
Germany, charging it with an "attempt to destabilize" East
Germany. But the East German media also raged against Hungary,
accusing it of "trading human lives for pieces of silver," a
pointed suggestion that Hungary had swapped the refugees for
hard West German currency. Two days after the border was thrown
open, East Germany charged that Hungary was in "clear violation
of legal treaties" and demanded that it stop letting the
refugees through. Budapest angrily dismissed the charges and
asserted that it was not willing to become a "refugee camp" for
East Germany's problem. Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn
rejected the charges of payments from West Germany as
"unacceptable and insulting," then hinted that East Germany
might be guilty of the same. Horn had a point: since 1961, East
Germany has demanded cash from West Germany before granting
legal exit permits for many of its citizens. This year alone,
Bonn is expected to pay East Berlin $200 million for refugee
resettlement. For all of Hungary's righteous indignation,
however, it is believed that quiet promises were made by Bonn
that will translate into generous aid.

    The decision to open the border came only after a tortuous
debate within the Central Committee of the ruling Hungarian
Socialist Workers' Party. Hard-liners argued that existing
agreements with other socialist states must be upheld, while
reformers said it was more important to meet international
obligations, among them the 1975 Helsinki agreements and the
U.N. convention on refugees. Imre Pozsgay, the party's
pre-eminent reformer, told TIME, "We took the step that embraced
the higher of the principles involved, that of human rights."

    Most of Eastern Europe followed the lead of Moscow, which
attempted to avoid intra-alliance finger pointing and instead
blamed Bonn. As for Hungary, the Soviets displayed cautious
sympathy. In an interview with the BBC, Foreign Ministry
spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov said that Hungary was "in a Catch-22
situation. On the one hand, it had an agreement with the (German
Democratic Republic) not to allow G.D.R. citizens to travel to
a third country. On the other hand, it had all these people
there. It was a very difficult, very unusual situation."

    In truth, it was the Soviet Union that was in a very
difficult and very unusual situation. Hungary, along with
Poland, is the most enthusiastic East-bloc supporter of Mikhail
Gorbachev's reforms. Moreover, Gorbachev has pledged
noninterference in East European affairs. At the same time,
Gorbachev does not want to preside over the collapse of the
Warsaw Pact. Moscow's unease may in part explain the arrival of
Soviet Politburo Member Yegor Ligachev in East Berlin last week.
Moscow said the trip was long planned, but there was little
doubt that the presence of Ligachev, a hard-liner known for his
resistance to Gorbachev's reforms, could not help reassuring
intransigent East Germany that its ties with Moscow remained
solid. If East Germany was also quietly being urged to adopt a
more flexible posture, Ligachev was the man to deliver the
message.

    The diplomatic ballet, however, was a mere sideshow to the
drama of the border crossings. When the order came from
Budapest at midnight last Sunday, Hungarian border guards
blocking the 600-yard crossing at Hegyeshalom to the Austrian
town of Nickelsdorf smiled and began to wave the refugees
through. Across they came, on foot and bicycles, in German
Wartburgs and Czech Skodas. Some drivers paused to put black
tape over the first D and the R on their DDR
vehicle-identification stickers, leaving a single D for
Deutschland. "What a Monday!" cried an Austrian radio
newscaster. "Boris Becker wins the U.S. Open, and lots of
D.D.R. citizens win the Hungarian Open!"

    Most moved on quickly, eager to complete the 250-mile trek
across Austria to their new homeland. Cries of "Free at last!"
filled the air as newcomers leaped from their vehicles to kiss
the West German asphalt. In Passau, volunteers passed out candy
and fruit to sleepy-eyed children, who must have thought they
had awakened in the midst of a carnival. "I came for her," said
a young father, hoisting his daughter into his arms. "She
deserves more than a life in East Germany." The first signs were
promising. Because Bonn acknowledges only one German
citizenship, the refugees were automatically recognized as
citizens and as such were showered with gifts and benefits.
Mountains of donated clothes piled up at the reception camps,
and the refugees received a minimum of $125 to cover immediate
expenses. As citizens, the refugees were also entitled to
unemployment payments.

    But most are unlikely to be on the dole for long. Potential
employers quickly descended on the camps, seeking to hire
everyone from welders and machinists to carpenters, bakers and
locksmiths. In the Schoppingen area near the Dutch border, there
were 5,000 job proposals chasing just 1,500 refugees. "I am
swimming in offers," said Dennis Kiesewalter, 22, a roofer. "At
home I was told about unemployment here." The outpouring of jobs
probably startled some West Germans as well; the unemployment
rate currently stands at almost 7%. The fact is, however, that
the East Germans offer employers certain advantages that most
natives do not. The newcomers, by and large, are mobile, are
accustomed to working harder than many West Germans and are not
finicky about getting their hands dirty.

    They are also on average far younger than the East Germans
who beat a path to West Germany's door in the past. According
to polls conducted for the Ministry for Intra-German Relations,
more than half of the refugees are under 30, and only 17% are
over 40. Surveys showed that fully 86% have vocational or
professional training, and an equal number held down
professional jobs in East Germany. All of those polled owned
television sets back home, almost two-thirds owned private cars,
and 15% had weekend homes.

    Clearly, most of the new flood of refugees are not
compelled westward by economic distress. True, the consumer
offerings in West Germany far outstrip what is available back
home, but East Germany enjoys the best living standard of any
East European country. Most of the refugees, however, define a
better life in terms that cannot be measured in deutsche marks.
Of those polled, almost three-quarters said they were driven by
the lack of freedom of expression and travel. Almost as many
said they wanted more personal responsibility for their own
destiny. As Heide Zitzmann, 37, a schoolteacher, summed it up,
"I felt buried alive."

    Mixed in, largely unnoticed, among the thousands of East
Germans making the trek westward was a handful of Rumanians and
Soviets. That trickle could portend problems for all of Europe.
While the Germans are a special case with their historic claims
to a single nationhood, other East Europeans are eyeing
Hungary's hole in the Iron Curtain and fantasizing about life
on the other side.

    Hungary has made plain that its opening for the East
Germans is a "unique step" and does not extend to others. But
the increasing porousness of the East-West border coincides with
the disintegration of the economies of most of Eastern Europe,
and it does not require much imagination to foresee that others
might try to crash borders. "If our perestroika succeeds and
theirs fails," warns a top French foreign-policy adviser,
referring to Western Europe's plans for a single market by the
end of 1992, "then it will not just be the East Germans
scrambling to get out." Precisely such a prospect is turning
immigration into a hot political issue in many European
countries, and will enable xenophobic parties like France's
National Front and West Germany's Republican Party to climb
still further in the polls. The problem is compounded by the
European Community plans for 1992, which will ease border
travel throughout Western Europe.

    Compassion is unlikely to run very high. "Until recently,
refugees from Eastern Europe could play the persecution card,"
says a senior E.C. official. "But with the political reforms
that have taken place in Poland and Hungary, it is going to be
harder for refugees to meet the test." The U.S. is already
facing up to that question now as Congress prods the Bush
Administration to up its proposed annual quota of 50,000 Soviet
Jewish refugees. Last week Jewel Lafontant, the U.S. coordinator
for refugee affairs, raised a storm when she suggested that
those denied U.S. entry could "always go to Israel or return to
Russia. In these days of glasnost, that's not an impossible
thing."

    Moreover, if the reforms now being undertaken in Eastern
Europe are going to stick, it is in no one's interest to drain
these countries of their best and brightest. As former West
German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt wrote last week in Die Zeit,
"We shouldn't invite the G.D.R. to bleed itself out."

    The longer-term challenge for Eastern Europe will be to
create economic as well as political conditions that will
encourage its citizens to remain at home. In the shorter term,
however, Hungary has found a temporary solution to an immediate
problem. It remains unclear how long that option will remain.
For the moment, Budapest seems inclined to allow its border with
Austria to stay open at least another few weeks. If the tide
continues, East Germany may tighten up on its citizens' travel
to Hungary, and Hungary itself may begin to impose visa
requirements on visitors. In the meantime, history is being made
at the border crossing at Hegyeshalom.


-- John Borrell/Budapest, William Mader/London and William
Rademaekers/Bonn