'E. Germans Find Refuge In Poland

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29896, 9 August 1962, Page 13

'E. Germans Find Refuge In Poland

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, August 8. The East German refugee stream is reported to be flowing in a new direction across the heavily-guarded border into Poland. A “Daily Express” correspondent, Rene Mac Coll, said today that the East Germans were fleeing their “land of rationing” in a growing stream and risking a mauling by guard dogs and machine-guns to seek refuge in Poland.

The Poles, who prided themselves on the liberal way they interpreted their membership of the Communist Bloc, were letting the German refugees stay.

Mac Coll. in a front-page report from Warsaw, said that for obvious reasons neither East Germany nor Poland wanted to say much about “this remarkable new emigration trend."

As Poland still had a permanent minority of German citizens, the newcomers, once inside, could be assimilated without great difficulty.

But the two Communist nations “fail to present a friendly atmosphere” along their joint borders and the escaping Germans had to face formidable hazards during their journey. Frontier guards used watch towers and searchlights, as well as guns and dogs A belt of newly-ploughed earth displayed tell-tale footsteps. “All this restrictive para-

phemalia that is accepted as normal along East-Wesf borders also appears on the frontiers between the Soviet’s satellite nations,” said MacColl. He said that in Poland, the East Germans found a “paradise of good living” compared to the rationing and shortages of East Germany.

He described the economic plight of East Germany, where he had just spent a week, as “precarious”— especially in the agricultural field.

He was “staggered” by near-hysteria everywhere over the presence of British. United States and French troops in Berlin. East German officials said openly that the American station, R.I.A.S. (Radio in the American Sector) was having a most serious effect on morale and was listened to in all parts of East Germany.