E. Germans spurn offer to go home

Press, 24 October 1989, Page 8

E. Germans spurn offer to go home

NZPA-Reuter West Berlin East Germans who fled to the West say their country’s new leader, Egon Krenz, can keep his offer to return home and start afresh.

“Never again. I would rather sleep here under a bridge,” said an East Berliner, Mike Heese, who has spent his first six weeks in the West at a hostel after fleeing via Hungary. “It’s totally out of the question,” said another East German. “It’s kaputt (ruined) over there.”

Mr Heese, aged 21, is one of the 120,000 East Germans who have left East Germany legally and illegally this year in the biggest exodus since the former East German leader, Erich Honecker, built the Berlin Wall in 1961.

East Germany said at the week-end that they could all apply to return home, signalling a softer approach to the exodus that has combined with pro-democracy protests to topple Mr Honecker as Communist Party leader and put Mr Krenz in his place. “We need every man and every woman, and we are willing to find out and eradicate the reasons that have led to so many people turning their backs on us,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wolfgang Meyer, said: He said anyone could return, providing “no important reasons stand in the way,”

and would be helped to Resettle. Most of the East Germans who have left have cited dissatisfaction with living standards, lack of travel freedoms and frustration at the rigidity of the political system as reasons for seeking a new life in the West. East German state television has screened interviews with a few people who have already returned home, citing problems finding suitable work and a place to live in West Germany.

But remarks yesterday by East Germans at the hostel and at emergency shelters set up in West Berlin suggest that few will follow, in spite of promises from Mr Krenz of easier travel to the West and better economic opportunities.

“Reforms? They’ve been promising that all my life and things have got worse,” said one woman aged in her 40s. “I don’t care if I have to live in this shelter for another six months.”

Added Anja Mohr, aged 15, who travelled west with her family after camping out at the West German embassy in Prague: “After all we’ve been through ... we can’t go back now.

“We’ve already talked about where we’ll live and what we’re going to buy. That’s what’s keeping us here."