This Way Out

Since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, the number of East German escapes to the West has been cut by more than half, and the figure keeps dropping almost every month. The rest of Eastern Europe cannot boast the same success. Last year escapes from Yugoslavia, Rumania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Albania rose more than 20%, and so far this year they are up another 30% .

Like their East German counterparts, many of the refugees are simply fleeing Communism, despite all the recent political relaxation in Eastern Europe. Others merely want to escape nagging wives or mothers-in-law. Still others may be seeking adventure or a fresh start. All have one thing in common: they are not afraid to take a chance.

The biggest escape route is tourism. By year's end, Eastern European countries will have permitted more than 750,000 of their people to visit the West. Despite careful screening, some 35,000 of them will have defected. "One emigrant in a party is within the allowed margin," says an Eastern European tour guide. "When you lose six or seven, they start asking questions." Of 17 Hungarians who visited Stockholm last May, nine stayed behind. On a tour of Greece this summer, the Rumanian State Opera lost a soprano, a ballerina, the first cellist and a violinist.

For those who do not qualify as legal travelers, there is always the more hazardous route past the minefields, barbed wire, watchtowers and border patrols that hem Communist frontiers. Last week two Hungarians escaped to Austria by flying their tiny sports plane at treetop level all the way from Budapest. A pair of Rumanians recently hid for three days under a truckload of tomatoes bound for Austria. Another rode into Vienna in a refrigerated railway car, where he spent seven days and nights huddled between two sides of beef, nibbling raw meat for nourishment. One Hungarian even ran a stolen train across the Austrian border at 50 m.p.h. But of all the tight spots escapees get themselves into, no one could match the Rumanian contortionist who folded her self up like a lawn chair and slipped across the border under an auto seat.

If caught, the refugees often face brutal treatment at the hands of border guards. But not always. Take the skipper of a Rumanian patrol boat who recently intercepted a family of five that was trying to row across the Black Sea to Turkey. The skipper ordered the runaway family into the cutter, ordered his seamen into the rowboat, and the six roared off together toward the Turkish horizon--and freedom.

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