TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/101689/10168900.048

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 13KB | 251 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