WORLD, Page 30REFUGEESThe Great EscapeBy allowing thousands of East Germans to flee to West Germany,Hungary infuriates its Warsaw Pact ally. But how will the newarrivals 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
