The Double Flow

The number of East Germans fleeing west (3,500,000 since 1945) is again on the rise. Reason: the Communist regime has launched another big drive to collectivize the East German countryside.

Gangs of agitators 70-and 80-strong descend on villages, plaster handbills on walls, harangue the people over loudspeakers, and turn every threat and promise on each individual farmer to join "the beautiful socialist society." Some farmers have committed suicide rather than submit. Many have slaughtered their livestock. The Erfurt Communist newspaper, Das Volk, recently reported 380 barn burnings in its district. And the most desperate have wrenched themselves away from their ancestral holdings and fled west, joining a refugee stream of about 400 a day. Said one farmer who fled last week to West Berlin with his family, after hearing that he was to be arrested: "I won't be a slave on my own land."

Curiously enough, there is at the same time a sizable flow of men, women and children in the other direction. The Communists have set up five refugee reception centers on their side of the border and claim that last year 63,076 people crossed over to the East, 41,585 of them redefectors who had left East Germany and then decided to return. Some were miners fleeing the Ruhr coal surplus, others had family problems like a sick mother back home, still others were misfits who had not made themselves a place in the swift-paced life of the Federal Republic. Western officials estimate that the reverse migration runs to about 10% to 15% of the westward flow.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.