TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/101689/10168900.048

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 13KB | 233 lines

WORLD, Page 38

REFUGEES

Freedom Train

As thousands of its citizens flee to the West, East Germany

celebrates a bitter 40th birthday

By William R. Doerner


    The timing of Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to East Germany could
not have been more awkward. On the 40th anniversary of the
country's founding as a separate socialist state, the government
in East Berlin found itself utterly humiliated. Like storm-besieged
dikes, the borders of the country had sprung one leak after
another, and thousands of refugees were pouring out. The routine
anniversary visit threatened to turn into another diplomatic
nightmare for the Soviet President, fraught with the kind of
tensions and prodemocracy demonstrations that marred his trip to
China last spring. It was Gorbachev's message of change, after all,
that had largely inspired the freedom flight.

    But through a combination of cautious diplomacy on Gorbachev's
part and careful crowd control by his hosts, the two-day visit went
off without any major embarrassments. Arriving at Schonefeld
Airport on Friday, the Soviet leader was greeted with enthusiastic
cries of "Gorbi! Gorbi!" but the reception remained calm. About
3,000 people gathered the next day in Alexanderplatz to demand
government reform, the biggest such demonstration in East Berlin
since 1953, but again the police managed to control the crowd.
Officials were less successful in keeping the lid on demonstrations
outside the capital: in Dresden and Leipzig violent clashes between
protesters and police continued throughout the weekend.

    In public statements Gorbachev walked a fine line between
encouraging reform and offering support for Erich Honecker, East
Germany's aged and embattled leader. Wading into a crowd with
characteristic aplomb, the Soviet visitor urged patience. "Don't
panic. Don't get depressed. We'll go on fighting together for
socialism." He made a strong show of solidarity with Honecker,
standing shoulder to shoulder with him as they reviewed a
torchlight parade. When he alluded to the current crisis in a
televised address, Gorbachev took pains to be circumspect. "We know
our German friends well," he said. "We know their ability to think
creatively, to learn from life and to make changes when necessary."

    But those measured words came too late for the East Germans who
had already opted to make a run for a better life in the West. Last
week alone some 8,200 fled, raising the total number of refugees
over the past five months to 50,000. Some jumped at the opportunity
without a moment's hesitation, others agonized over it. "We talked
about it way into the night for days on end," said Christiane
Weinbauer of Halle, who joined the exodus with her husband last
week. "One minute we had decided to go, and the next we were
staying for the sake of our relatives or the children or for
reasons of security. Then we heard on a West German radio station
that the people in the embassy in Prague were being taken to the
West. It was Saturday night. We stayed up talking again, and by
early morning we were packing. We had finally made up our minds."

    So had enough other young men, women and children to turn a
trickle of refugees into a torrent, pouring out of every crack they
could find in the crumbling Iron Curtain. The first route, through
Hungary, has largely shut down since East German officials cut back
on exit permits to that country a month ago. Next, East Germans by
the thousands planted themselves in the West German embassy in
Prague, as Czechoslovakia was the only country to which they were
allowed to travel without an exit permit. Those who could slip into
Poland converged on Bonn's compound in Warsaw. And when special
trains carrying the refugees to West Germany were routed back
through their homeland, near riots resulted. Dozens clambered over
fences, lunged at the passing cars and climbed aboard, convinced
that the moving trains offered the last opportunity to get out.

    The illegal exodus has been going on since May, when Hungary
began clipping the barbed wire separating the East bloc from
Austria. But nothing dramatized the crisis so vividly -- or posed
the hard questions for East Germany so immediately -- as the swarm
of tents packed with would-be emigres overflowing the embassy
compound in Prague. Last Tuesday, after the first freedom trains
had rolled out of Prague, Honecker sealed off the country's border
to Czechoslovakia, leaving East Germans isolated and caged once
more. There were signs late in the week, however, that restrictions
on emigration might be eased, according to West German Foreign
Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

    The paradox is that East Germany's 40th birthday party should
have been a glorious moment for the 77-year-old Honecker. Largely
because of his grimly orthodox leadership, "Honi" could boast of
giving the German Democratic Republic the strongest economy, the
finest industry and one of the best-fed, best-housed and
best-educated populations in the East bloc. It was the world's most
successful -- or least unsuccessful -- example of Marxist
government.

    The refugees' flight seemed not only a dramatic act of
rejection by his own people but also a challenge to the legitimacy
-- and perhaps the very existence -- of Honecker's country. Beneath
the flags and banners, East Germans are increasingly questioning
who and what they are -- and not liking the answers. Those who have
made their way to the West since the beginning of the year have
done so not out of material desperation or fear of persecution but
in blunt renunciation of the East German system. "It is a
suffocating place, and we didn't see any chance of the present
regime's changing," said Karl Weinbauer as he waited, dirty and
cold, in Prague.

    Many who stay behind share the same anger and frustration.
"People are leaving East Germany because they have lost all hope
of change, because the Communists are closed to Gorbachev's
policies of glasnost and perestroika," said Reinhard Schult, one
of the founders of the biggest new opposition movement, New Forum.
"We can no longer tolerate the kindergarten atmosphere or being
constantly led by the nose on all fronts."

    Few expect things to get better under Honecker. And though in
failing health, he shows no signs of turning power over to the next
generation. While their neighbors in Poland and Hungary rush to
embrace the reforms of perestroika and glasnost, East Germany's
aged chieftains have stoutly withstood all blandishments, even from
Gorbachev, to abandon the strict orthodoxies of conventional
Communism. The result: a country so calcified that its citizens
find a hopeful future only in flight.

    So far this year, more than 110,000 East Germans have left, far
and away the most since the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. Slightly
more than half have departed with official permission, a sign that
the Honecker regime has been forced to relax its policy of limiting
emigration to the elderly and a few political dissidents. According
to West German officials, some 1.8 million East Germans -- more
than 10% of the population -- have applied to leave, despite the
risk of job and educational discrimination.

    But growing numbers refuse to wait for permission. In August
and September, more than 30,000 vacationers took advantage of the
newly opened border between Hungary and Austria to cross into West
Germany. East Berlin tightened controls on travel to Hungary, yet
new refugees continue to slip over at the rate of 200 to 500 a day.
Hungary has rejected any suggestion that it close its borders.

    Last week it was Prague's turn to play host to the refugee
hordes. As East Germany's closest ally within the bloc,
Czechoslovakia had long been deemed a safe foreign destination.
Last year some 4 million East Germans, a quarter of the entire
population, crossed into Czechoslovakia on vacation trips. Prague's
hard-line regime demonstrated its reliability on the refugee issue
by discouraging East German travel to neighboring Hungary at the
height of the exodus there.

    As the easy exit through Hungary all but closed, a sense of
desperation spurred more departures. East German visitors to Prague
began moving onto the grounds of the former Lobkowitz palace, a
baroque edifice that serves as West Germany's embassy. There they
joined several hundred other East Germans who had been living at
the embassy for as long as two months waiting for permission to
leave for West Germany. The ranks of the occupiers swelled steadily
to 5,000. Their tents and blankets covered virtually every square
inch of a football-field-size garden in back of the embassy, and
hundreds more slept on floors inside. The plots of ground not
covered were churned to mud by constant foot traffic, and bathroom
facilities were hopelessly overrun.

    Still they came, and as more and more East Germans clogged the
streets around the embassy, overwhelmed officials sought a
diplomatic solution. On Sept. 30, West German Foreign Minister
Genscher arrived in Prague with word that the two Germanys had
agreed to transport the emigres to the West. They left the next
day.

    But under terms dictated by the Honecker regime, the special
refugee trains were required to travel back through East German
territory before depositing their human cargo in Bavaria. The
face-saving yet ultimately self-defeating scheme was designed to
permit authorities to engage in the fiction that they were
"expelling" disloyal citizens. In the end, this petty legalism only
encouraged more to flee. As the freedom trains slowed along hills
and at curves, daring East Germans hopped aboard and joined the
flight to the West.

    That solution proved astonishingly short-lived. Within a few
hours of the first transfer, new arrivals began showing up at the
Prague embassy, many of them drawn by news of the safe passage of
the first group. East Germany, believing that its agreement was for
a once-only exodus, reacted angrily to Bonn's decision to allow
more refugees into the compound.

    Barely recovered from gallbladder surgery, Honecker went on TV
to accuse Bonn of trying "to turn East Germany upside down with a
comprehensive attack." West Germany flatly denied that it had
reneged on a pledge to shut its doors to new refugees. "There was
no such agreement," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Jurgen Chrobog.
"We would never accept that German people should stand outside a
German embassy with small children without giving shelter and care.
The East Germans wanted to build a wall around our embassy. Now
they're building a wall around themselves."

    Day after day new throngs poured in. There were so many
abandoned Trabant and Wartburg automobiles on Prague streets that
police began towing away any vehicle with East German stickers on
it. On Tuesday, Ambassador Hermann Huber ordered the embassy gates
closed when the refugee population had reached 5,000, then hours
later, as the night turned bitterly cold, reopened them to families
with children. A new round of departures was scheduled and then
delayed. East German officials, moreover, insisted that the second
group of trains make the trip from Prague to the West German city
of Hof at night, rendering it more difficult for hitchhikers to
board.

    Some trains did pass through Dresden, where up to 15,000
besieged the city's main train station, only to be driven back by
police wielding clubs and water cannons. The crowd, which included
casual onlookers as well as those trying to get on the trains,
overturned police vehicles and pelted police with rocks. A total
of 7,600 East Germans from Prague reached safety in Hof the next
morning, and 600 more arrived from Warsaw the following day,
bringing to 15,000 the total evacuated since the embassy
occupations began.

    East Germany's decision to permit the mass departures was
almost certainly occasioned by the approaching national
anniversary. But the larger dilemma remains unresolved. New travel
restrictions do not address the root causes of widespread popular
disaffection in East Germany. "It's like taking an aspirin for a
toothache," said a Western diplomat in Prague. "It may relieve the
pain, but it won't fix the problem." As the rioting in Dresden made
only too clear, the refugees who had the good luck to act are
hardly the only ones who want out. In Leipzig, 10,000 East Germans
marched through the streets demanding change and shouting the name
of the man who inspires them: "Gorbi! Gorbi!"

    Things are unraveling fast for the East German regime. Some
Western analysts fear a longer-term crackdown, but that would
merely increase internal pressure, not diminish it. In the long
run, Honecker, or his successors, will be forced into reform. Yet
steps toward democracy and a free-market economy pose a special
peril for the G.D.R. If East Germany became more like West Germany,
what would be the point of a separate state?


-- John Borrell/Prague and James O. Jackson/Berlin