Refugees: Two Kinds of Exodus

A century of turmoil has turned millions of people into exiles and refugees, the displaced and the dispossessed. Perhaps saddest of all is the plight of those who have found themselves aliens in their native lands. The two stories that follow deal with such groups:

Vanguard from the East

The double doors of the drab green second-class railroad coach burst open as the train jerked to a halt. Onto the rain-drenched station platform tumbled 21 disheveled passengers. Men in ill-fitting clothes hurriedly handed down bulging cardboard suitcases. One man struggled with a monstrous feather mattress while a small boy darted away to admire the bicycles in a commuter's rack. There were few words, only a rush to get off the train. With good reason. For many of the passengers, the train was a reminder of a world they have been trying to leave since 1945.

For months to come, this scene will be repeated every day at precisely 8:37 a.m. That is when the Hanover-Kassel local pulls into Friedland (pop. 1,200), site of West Germany's East European refugee camp. Since the exodus began last week, more than 250 Germans have arrived from Poland--the vanguard of many more who are expected to make the trek by mid-1972. The refugees are the first tangible result of Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik.

Secret Protocol. The problem of Poland's ethnic Germans dates from 1945, when Silesia, East Brandenburg, Pomerania and East Prussia, the former German provinces east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, were ceded to Poland at the Potsdam Conference. Some 9,575,000 Germans lived in the four provinces then; 7,330,000 have since left. In December, when West Germany recognized the Oder-Neisse boundary in the Bonn-Warsaw Treaty, a secret protocol paved the way for the remaining Germans to leave.

How many will choose to do so is anybody's guess. The Poles talk about "several tens of thousands," while the Germans claim that a minimum of 100,000 qualify on the grounds that they have next of kin living in West Germany.

Prior to the agreement, applications for an exit visa were usually refused or simply ignored. Konrad K., 41, a worker in a Silesian concrete factory, applied twelve times in seven years. Three weeks ago, a plainclothesman knocked on his door and informed him that he must leave Poland by the end of the month. To help pay for his Polish exit visa (about $200 for persons over 16), he sold his antique Polish car for $100. "Some Poles were angry with us and shouted that we should have gotten out earlier," said Heinz H., 60, a telegraph operator for the Polish state railroad. "I told them that if they had let us, we would have gone on foot."

This exodus entails few physical hardships. On arrival at the hospital-clean refugee camp, the newcomers are fed a hearty breakfast, and over the next four days they are given medical checkups, new papers, job counseling and briefings. When the refugees are ready to leave the camp, the Bonn government provides each family of four with the equivalent of $200; the newcomers are also entitled to reimbursement for visa and travel expenses. In labor-short West Germany, where 900,000 jobs are open, the refugees should have no trouble finding work.

Adjusting to a new way of life will be more difficult. Some leave behind children who have married Poles. Others, like a 30-year-old woman who last saw her father when she was five, will meet parents they barely recognize. Many have children who speak almost no German. Still, as an elderly woman put it, "Generations of my family have lived in Upper Silesia, but since it became a part of Poland, it is no longer our homeland. We left because we want to die as Germans."

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