How Long Must We Wait?

Many of the thousands of refugees daily fleeing Communist tyranny make their way into Berlin. Last week, TIME'S Berlin Bureau Chief Emmet Hughes visited a city government office newly set up to receive them. Hughes cabled:

At the end of the dark corridor, a single candle glows. Only the candle keeps you from walking straight into the wall where it is held by a clumsy piece of wire, for here the corridor turns in a sharp L. Around the corner, you find yourself blindly stumbling over people's feet, and hear voices whispering. A voice hoarse with age or cold: "From Greifswald you come? Last night?" A woman's voice, dull and flat: "Not much, about 60 marks left." A man's voice, strong with impatience: "How long must we wait? Do they think we are cattle?" The voice of an older man, speaking assurance to himself: "All will be well soon--when we are on the plane." The angry voice again: "Fool . . . There will be no plane."

Credentials of Fear. So you will find it any afternoon on the third floor of the cinder-grey building at 54 Kantstrasse, in Berlin's British sector. The feet you stumble over have trudged from the Soviet zone. They are the tired feet of those who flee from the "people's democracy."

In a tiny office at the end of the dark corridor, they are greeted by Helmuth Rosenow--a tall, thin man in his late 303. In Nazi days he was a courier in the Socialist underground, traveling regularly between Prague and Berlin.

Since Rosenow set up his barren shop (his office lacks even a telephone) Jan. 1, the refugees have come at an average of 150 a day. Rosenow examines each person's credentials of fear: arrest certificates, summonses to work in uranium mines. A few lucky applicants are flown to Western Germany. Others must remain in Berlin, return to their homes, or continue their perilous journey afoot through the Russian zone to the West. Rosenow explained: "Panic alone is not enough. We have that everywhere. We can hope to help only those who must flee to live--and perhaps to fight again another day."

The Pressure. I talked with Oskar Kochne, a blue-eyed, 21-year-old veteran of the Soviet zone's uranium mines. He was still wearing his dark blue miner's cap with its little aluminum shield of crossed hammers. Oskar was taken by the Russians almost two years ago, as he was traveling toward East Prussia to rejoin his family. The Reds sent him to the mining camp at Aue. He has worked there since, rising at 1:30 every morning, traveling two hours by rail to the closely guarded mines, working until 1 in the afternoon for his daily meal of watery soup and monthly wage of 350 marks (about $30). Oskar is among the lucky. Young and strong and still unafraid, he probably will soon be flown to the West. All miners are welcome in the Ruhr.

No such easy refuge awaits Frau K. She was conspicuous among those I saw; she carried no rucksack, she was well dressed, and her eyes bulged with fear edging on hysteria. She had traveled all day from a village north of Berlin where her husband is a physician. Dr. K., a Stalingrad prisoner, was released a year ago and soon resumed his old practice. The local MVD eyed his success and set their price. He was summoned and instructed to use his office as an intelligence center, to submit reports on all his patients, some of whom were suspected of being "enemies of democracy." He refused. He was told that if he remained intransigent, he would be imprisoned. When he finally told his wife, she came to Berlin to learn if she and her husband could escape to the West.

"You cannot believe, because you cannot understand, what it is to live under the Russians," she explained. "At first, you don't see anything evil. The pressure comes slowly, incalculably--until suddenly you know you must die or flee or betray." Last night Frau K. sneaked back to her town with little hope. She and the doctor can have no promise of being flown to the West.

A Lodging for the Night. Helga is a handsome, smiling seven-year-old with dancing blue eyes, braided hair, and a rag doll which she swung gaily by its feet as we talked. She told me she was from Lehnin and her father & mother were waiting in the dark hall outside. Herr Arnold finally appeared--a hunchback under five feet tall. His brown, leathery face pursed up with a wry grin as he explained his prosaic cause for flight. He had idly signed a petition for the re-election of the local mayor. After a new mayor was elected, Arnold had been evicted by the police, on various grounds, from seven apartments in the last few months. Finally he decided they had better move for good. Life under the Russians? He grinned: "Ask Helga." Helga solemnly said: "Nicht schoen (Not pretty)."

As they come in the hundreds, there is yet no plan for helping these people. The shabby office, beyond offering a few nights' lodging, can only register names, count them and ask: What now? The answer can come only from one of those "top level" decisions in halls of state far from the world of the smiling hunchback or the frightened housewife.

It would be idle to pin labels on these people, call them "democrats." They are no more than families in flight. Doctors and lawyers, Zeiss technicians and garage mechanics, slave miners and girls tired of being raped in Soviet mess halls--they have nothing in common but their flight from evil and terror, from the lie and the lash. Down their dark, narrow corridor they come, heading, half drunk with fear, toward a single, small light.

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