Exodus From TYRANNY

How the massive flight of its citizenry exposed the realities of communist East Germany to the world

- BY H. Joachim Maitre

They were the refugees of autumn. Some came with only the clothes on their backs, others with the few possessions they could carry. Some travelled alone, some with babies in their arms and small children in tow. Never before had the expression “voting with their feet” been given such vivid substance.

It was a flood of East German refugees to the West in 1961 that caused the communist government to build the infamous Berlin Wall. And in a delicious symmetry of history, it was East German refugees streaming to the West this past fall who tore that stolid government apart and forced The Wall open.

I was not surprised that these young East Germans should flee when they found the door to freedom slightly open. After all, hundreds of thousands before them had risked—and sometimes lost—their lives to escape while the door was bolted. By 1961, when The Wall went up, East Germans found themselves behind a sullen barrier of masonry, mines and machine guns. So they crawled west under barbed wire, dodging searchlights and watch-dogs. They dug tunnels, swam rivers, flew out in homemade balloons, smashed through in crazy, makeshift armoured trucks.

The attempts and escapes were so numerous and commonplace as to be almost trite. Even we who had made “the crossing” paid scant attention. But no one could ignore this mass exodus. It began in May, when Hungary started to dismantle its section of the Iron Curtain. East Germans by the thousands headed down through Czechoslovakia to Hungary, all hoping to cross into Austria. Daunted by their sheer numbers, Hungary finally let them go in September. When the hard-line Czech government sealed its Hungarian border, East Germans en route to Hungary sought asylum at the West German embassy in Prague.