Evening star., 1947-07-22
Tens Of Thousands
OF Germans Trying
To Flee Red Zone
BY the Assoeiofsd Press

tions OF Europe are lining up either
under the Marshall plan or Molotov
plan, tens of thousands of Germans
caught Oil the Molotov side of the
fence are choosing for the west and
attempting illegal flight from the
Russian zone to the American Sec
tor, according to official informatio
This exodus from the east Is pro-
crossing despite incessant propa-
ganda in the Russian controlled
section of the German press, which
seeks to represent the combined
American-British zones of Western
Germany as a hunger paradise"
and colony for Wall Street capi-
talists'
American and British protestation
that their zones, jammed with 40
000, 900 Germans, can hold no more
are proving unavailing, especially
after the Russian walkout on the
Paris Economic Conference appar-
emily split Europe and Germany
down the middle, economically and
ideologically.
41,S79 Turned Back in April.
The exodus of Germans from the
Russian zone, which hit a peak Of
ST 900 last July and then slumped
during the winter, revived this
spring. During April American zone
border police turned back 41,879 per-
sons who attempted to enter the
zone Illegally and in addition seized
another 2,818 persons after they had
slipped past border controls.
There was no official estimate of
how many had actually made the
border crossing.
In mid-July the American Military
Government observed that "the
number or persons attempting lille
gal border crossings increased
sharply in Bavaria" 1t added that
in order to increase the efficiency of
German border police, measures
were being taken to provide them
with transportation to catch border
crossers traversing fields and climb
ing fences to escape the Russian
zone.
American Military Government
authorities in Bavaria have for
months called this situation "seri-
ous," and have complained to Gen.
Lucius d. Clay, the American mill
tary governor in Berlin.
Bavarian authorities who had
10000 Soviet zone refugees" to
handle in the space of two months,
placed them In camps after the
practice of turning people back from
the border had proven ineffective.
Reasons for Flight Listed.
There are, according to reliable
sources, several reasons for this
flight to the west:
l. Germans living in the Russian
zone have told touring American
correspondents that even If we
should have to do with fewer cal
ories per day we would have spirit
ual freedom under the Americans
and British"
2. In some sections of the Rus
sian zone, particularly Saxony,
where there are uranium mines,
Germans have been reported draft
ed for forced labor. Younger men
and women especially have rebelled
against the draft and are taking
fight. =.
3. A flight from the military
draft. The Neue zeitung, official
German newspaper Of the American
Military Government, recently re-
ported that throughout the Rus
sian zone former German army off,
GERS and pilots were being recruited
for service in the Russian Army
The paper added that the pilots
were told that if they fled mem
bers of their families would lose
their food ration cards or be held
as hostages.
Cartoon High Lights Situation.
Commenting on tine exodus, the
American-licensed Berlin newspaper
Tagesspiegel published a cartoon
showing Germans crawling under
barbed-wire fences from Soviet
occupied Thuringia to reach Ameri-
can-occupied Hesse. On the Rus
sian side they carried meager
belongings and on the American side
they Immediately lighted up cigar
cites and pipes.
A German border policeman on
the Russian side Is pictured as
saying:
Our comrade minister tells us we
should make propaganda against the
Western zones in order to defect
critical attention from the Eastern
(Russian) zone. You see what an
effect we have"
A Russian licensed newspaper
here printed a reply which stated
that most of the border crossers
were work shirkers and black
marketeerS. They asserted that
the Germans fleeing to the west
were of no use to the economy of the
labor short Eastern zone, and that
once they reached the Western zone
they opened up with a great deal
of slanderous hate propaganda
against the Russian zone"