Spring Flight

The first warm weather of spring, descending on Berlin at the Easter holidays, gave thousands of Berliners the urge to visit friends or go sightseeing in the opposite sector of their divided city. Trains between east and west operated at twice their usual capacity, and border traffic was unusually heavy. But not everyone was on a holiday jaunt. By last week 5,400 East Germans had taken advantage of the holiday crush to seek refuge in West Berlin. Defecting at the rate of 900 a day, they created the biggest mass rush to the West since the anti-Communist riots of June 17, 1953.

Questioned by West Germans (to see whether they should be admitted as bona fide refugees), most East Germans say the reason for their flight is economic: they are tired of eking out a grim living in the East, and have heard about West Germany's booming full employment. But political reasons increase the flow: East Germans whose ears are attuned to Communist dialectic concluded that the main message of the recent East German Communist Party congress is that reunification is farther away than ever, and that the Communists are bent on building up East Germany as a separate satellite state--so the refugees decided they had better get out while the getting was good.

Newly independent Austria has a Communist refugee problem too, but with a difference. Three out of every four of the defectors crossing into Austria are in flight from Tito's Yugoslavia.

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