Pilgrimage of Protest

From all points in East Germany, some 500,000 came to West Berlin last week for the second distribution of "Eisenhower packets" of free food. Lines formed early at 13 centers, beneath signs warning the people to keep mum about their identities and beware of informers. One twelve-year-old girl thought she spotted one: she told police that her East Zone teacher had been standing near her in the line, but had moved furtively away when she noticed him. The teacher explained that he had moved because he too had feared betrayal--by the little girl.

It was the journey back home that the Easterners feared most. The despised Volkspolizei were now checking all trains. Often they confiscated the parcels outright, and sent the lard, canned milk and beans along to their barracks. But those who merely lost their much needed gifts were lucky. The Vopos fined or arrested many. Some were accused of being American agents, a crime punishable by imprisonment or death, and to others the courts began meting out prison sentences as drastic as five years. On top of threat and punishment, the Reds tried by public ridicule to halt the sad parade of their hungry subjects. In Ruppin they put up posters showing a local man and his wife beside a well-stacked table. "The needy collect Ami food parcels," the signs read. "An example--Reinhard Dehnicke is a kulak with 44 hectares of land. He owns one tractor, three horses, 14 cows, 15 calves, five sheep, ten geese, 13 ducks, and employs two helpers." In East Berlin they pilloried Pastor Hermann Erhardt of the Pankow borough. "Has the pastor collected parcels because he is needy?" the signs asked. "He said he did it out of Christian charity. What a sham!"

But the more the Communists applied the pressure, the more East Germans defied them. By week's end the flow west had passed 65,000 a day and was still growing. "Why do you come at such risk?" one of the East Germans was asked. "Because they do not want us to come," said he bitterly. What began as a hunger parade had grown into a pilgrimage of protest.

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