THE DISILLUSIONED: TWELVE MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
104
Document Creation Date: 
December 23, 2016
Document Release Date: 
April 3, 2014
Sequence Number: 
7
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
January 1, 1959
Content Type: 
REPORT
File: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0.pdf11.19 MB
Body: 
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Twelve Million Refugees From Communism Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release . 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 t r, ili * THE DISILLUSIONED: TWELVE MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM Compiled and Edited By MARK PIROS October 1959 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 0.? ? FOREWORD "THE DISILLUSIONED: TWELVE MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM," is a compilation of twenty-nine articles about those who have fled from Communist-controlled areas since the end of World War Two. Some of the articles are first-hand accounts, dramatically told by the escapees themselves. The series sheds light on the overwhelming compulsions which cause men, women and children to flee from their homelands, often at risk to their lives. Portrayed here is the sorrow, the fear -- and finally the joy of escape -- experienced by this vast multitude of twelve million, a total greater than the entire nine million population of the Soviet satellite of Hungary. In Century of the Homeless Man, the noted writer El fan Rees observes that "It is one of the tragedies of the refugee problem that so much of it is the consequence of, and incidental to, world-shaking events whose progress and dangers preoccupy the public mind to the exclusion of all thought for and often any recognition of their human consequences." This, then, is an attempt to put on the record the results of some of these events: the story of the twelve million persons who escaped their Communist-ruled homelands to live in freedom. ????7 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 "It is not the hero, not the personality, but the people, who are the moving force of history." -- I. E. Petrov, Soviet Historian July 9, 1953 4 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ???? Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ? ? I TABLE OF CONTENTS PART 1: THE ESCAPES The Disillusioned: Twelve Million Refugees from Communism 1 Mark Piros The Million Refugees from Cemmunist China 7 Harold C. Hinton A Refugee's Report on Life in 4 Chinese Commune 13 Li Yu-pao "The Communists Called Us Parasites..." 20 Don Carlos The European Refugees in China 23 Merle Parker The Refugee Flight from Communist North Korea 29 Merle Parker 1 Chose Freedom in South Korea 34 Jai Duk Han Operation Exodus: The Flight of a Million Vietnamese from Communism 39 Merle Parker The Newest Escape from Communism: The Refugees from Tibet 47 Merle Parker The Tibetan Refugees Speak 52 From a report by the International Commission of Jurists Soviet Official Tells Why He Sought Political Asylum 59 Alexander Urevitch Kaznacheev The Greatest Flight from Communism: 3,500,000 Leave East Germany 65 George Bailey The Road to Berlin 73 Norman Cousins An East German Family Crashes Through the Iron Curtain 83 Mark Piros The 200,000 Hungarians Who Made History 89 Mark Piros We Fled the Communist Border We Were Guarding 95 Miklos Pal oczy "All Bulgarians Would Escape if They Could" 99 Mark Piros Escape From Communist Albania 105 Mark Piros I Flew a Glider Out of Communist Czechoslovakia 112 Jiri Kinski Why I Left Rumania 118 Vasile Berkovic PART II: THE RESULTS Why They Fled: A New Analysis of the 200,000 Hungarian Refugees 123 Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle, Jr. What the Loss of Refugees Does to a Communist Country: 129 A Report of the Population Reference Bureau The Soviet Redefection Campaign, i Its Successes and Failures 132 From the Report of the 7ellerbach Commission, "Refugees n Europe." What Happens to Refugees Who Go Home 137 A Report by the International League for the Rights of Man PART III: RESETTLEMENT Building a New Life: The Resettlement of the Refugees from Communism Mark Piros The Resettlement of a Hungarian University in Canada George S. Allen and Kalman Roller Father Pire: Nobel Prizewinner for Refugee Work Anne Burns Success in the Free World: Hungarian General Becomes Teacher Fred Brewer A Building in Darkness Stanley J. C. Wright 149 159 169 175 181 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ? ? PART! THE ESCAPES "The refugee is the victim of man's inhumanity to man. His presenct in Europe and elsewhere in the world Is the tragic outcome of political upheavals followed by intolerance, despotism and persecution.... The setting up of new regimes in the Eastern European countries and the dis- appearance from the map of a number of states made millions of these persons decide not to accept life under the new regimes in their home countries." 11111=1111?111M, ? from A_Uni_t_act_Nations Plan for Refugees, published by the Office OTThe UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Geneva Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 er. ? , ; 4 x113, '13, Despite the barbed wire and other obstacles which encircle the countries of the Sino-Soviet orbit, in the thirteen years since ths end of World War Il more than twelve million persons have fled from the Soviet Union, Communist China and the areas they control. This is a section of the Communist-erected "Iron Curtain" which divides the Soviet- controlled Zone of Germany from the free German Federal Republic. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release . 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 One of the most dramatic of all mass defections from communism was the exodus of nearly 200,000 Hungarians after Soviet armed forces crushed their country's freedom uprising of October 1956. Here two Hungarian refugees embrace on meeting in Vienna in December 1956. In early 1959 the Chinese Communist subjugation of Tibet, and the flight of the Dalai Lama, resulted in the influx of more than 15,000 Tibetans into India. A three-year-old Tibetan child smiles as he holds a man-sized cup of tea at a Tibetan refugee camp in Misamari, India. He was the first small child to arrive there with the refugees. The youngster's parents, Tibetan farmers, left their country after the unsuccessful insur- rection in Lhasa against the occupation forces of Com- munist China. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? ? ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE DISILLUSIONED: 12 MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM By Mark Piros (Writer on East European affairs) One of the most dramatic indictments of life under communism is the never-ending flow of refugees from the countries of the Sino-Soviet bloc. Despite the thousands of miles of barbed wire and other obstacles which encircle the Communist-ruled areas, more than twelve million persons have managed to escape since the end of World War II. They have fled from the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the areas they control: Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Tibet. Despite many near-insurmountable obstacles, and the hardships involved in leaving one's native land, these people have abandoned their homes or farms, most of their possessions, and left jobs and sometimes even family members, for the chance to live in freedom. Yet they are only a small percentage of those who would leave if there were no border barriers. There are more refugees in intent than there are in fact. Four of the Communist-ruled countries have lost more than a million citizens each to the free world: East Germany, Communist China, North Korea, and North Vietnam. What has been called the greatest sustained movement of refugees in modern history_is continuing for the thirteenth year out of Communist East 3. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Ar' THE DISILLUSIONED: 12 MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM Germany. Since the end of World War II, more than three and a half million citizens of the Soviet-controlled Zone and East Berlin have gone to live and work in the free west. The East German population is being whittled steadily by an exodus averaging around 3,000 weekly. The total number of refugees who have left the Soviet Zone and East Berlin since 1945 amounts to almost 20 percent of that area's population, and makes Communist East Germany the only area in continental Europe with a declining population. In addition to the hundreds of East Germans who daily seek sanctuary in West Berlin, recently some hundreds of Czechs and Hungarians have been coming into the estern sector of the city after entering East Germany with Communist-approved passports. Although it is even more difficult to escape from Communist China than from most other countries of the Sino-Soviet bloc, three million Chinese have left the mainland since the Communists began their conquest. The estimated 1,000,000 of these Chinese refugees who have settled in Hong Kong-Macao form the largest single bloc of anti-Communist refugees in the world. The current influx of refugees into Hong Kong is estimated at about 100,000 per year, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to leave the mainland. There are also in Communist China about 9,000 White Russians who have not yet been able to leave the country, but who have informed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that they wish, to do so. They fled from communism once before, following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and settled for the most part in Manchuria and Northeast China. Recent developments, both political and economic, within Communist China make the position of these residual refugees more precarious than ever. 2 4 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ? THE DISILLUSIONED: 12 MILLION REFUGEES FROM COYMUNISM When the Soviet-controlled North Korean regime was formed north of the 38th parallel in May 1948, another great exodus from communism began. Within two years, 1.8 million residents of the Communist zone, out of a total population of 9 million, migrated southward to the republic of Korea. In June of 1950, when the Communist armies of North Korea invaded the Republic of Korea, the refugee flight continued. Within seven months an additional 800,000 Koreans escaped to the south. When an armistic was signed on July 27, 1953, after three years of war, 7,731 North Korean prisoners of war refused repatriation to Communist North Korea. Thousands of North Korean and Chinese soldiers also refused to go home when the war ended_ Almost exactly a year later, in July 1954, when Vietnam was partitioned dnd the Communists took full control of the northern part of that country, there began a similar but even more rapid mass movement of persons to freedom. Although the Communist Viet Minh dishonored their own signatures to the Geneva Armistice agreement, which permits freedom of movement, and did everything possible to stop the refugee flow, within ten months nearly one million Vietnamese had fled from the Communist-controlled north to the free south. Perhaps the most dramatic of all mass defections from Communist rule was the exodus of nearly 200,000 Hungarians who fled after Soviet troops and tanks crushed their national freedom revolution of October 1956. To escape from the Soviet-imposed regime of terror which followed the uprising, thousands of men, women and children sacrificed everything they possessed and 3 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE DISILLUSIONED: 12 MILLION REFUGEES PROM COMMUNISM risked death or imprisonment to flee to Austria or Yugoslavia. Most of the Hungarian refugees were eventually re-settled in free world countries. . Besides those Hungarians who ,:are oc.4 in late 1956 and early 1957, an additional 200,000 have fled in other years since Hungary became a Soviet satellite in 1947. The list of post-World War II refugees from the Sino-Soviet bloc also includes 290,000 from the Soviet Union; 200,000 from the once-independent Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; 400,000 Karelians who moved to Finland when the Karelian Isthmus was ceded to the USSR; 638,000 from Poland; 187,000 from Communist Bulgaria (including some 175,000 ethnic Turks who fled to Turkey after World War II when Bulgaria was undergoing its worst period of forced collectivization and religious persecution); 76,000 former citizens of Communist Czechoslovakia; 53,000 Rumanians; and 18,000 Albanians. The most recent major refugee-producing development has been Communist China's brutal subjugation of Tibet. The flight of the Dalai Lama added drama to the movement of some 15,000 Tibetans into India. This, combined with an estimated 6,000 who escaped prior to the Tibetan revolt, brings to 21,000 the number of Tibetans who have fled Chinese Communist control of their homeland. That the constant flow of refugees produces a continuing strain upon the security systems of the Sino-Soviet orbit countries is best illustrated by the elaborate and expensive border control obstacles and guard units established to bar the way to freedom. Other negative consequences for the Communist regimes include the loss of "face" caused by the flight of so many millions and the loss of skilled manpower (particularly important in the case of East Germany). - ? THE DISILLUSIONED: 12 MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM Although millions of refugees already have found new homes, with the assistance of governments, private organizations and individuals throughout the free world, the general exoctue from the Sino-Soviet orbit countries -- despite attempts by the Communist regimes to stop it -- shows few signs of abating. This over-all trend continues to be one of the most obvious in- dications of the discontent which prevails among large sections of the popu- lation in areas under Communist rule. 5 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ' Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Since the Communists began their take-over of China, more than 3,000,000 Chinese have escaped through the narrow exits avOlable to them, altho it is even more difficult to escape from mainland China than from most other Communist countries. The flow was largest for the first few years after 1949, while the Communists were liquidating real and sus- pected opponents. Here throngs of middle-class Chinese cross Soochow Creek in Shanghai after that section had fallen to the Communists in 1949. The largest single group of anti-Communist refugees in the world are today settled in Hong Kong -- one million of the three million escapees from Communist China. Some recent refugees 4re shown here. Living in shacks jammed against the walls of buildings in the overcrowded city, their faces neverthe- less show their happiness on escaping from Communist- controlled China. t? THE THREE MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNIST CHINA By Harold C. Hinton (Dr. Hinton, a specialist on China, wrote the section on that country in Major Governments of Asia by George Kahl% published by the Cornell University Press in New York. He received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Far Eastern History from Harvard University, has taught at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and also did research at Cambridge and lectured at Oxford University.) It is even more difficult to escape from Mainland China than from most other Communist countries. About two-thirds of China's land frontier joins with other Communist-controlled .countries -- North Korea, the Soviet Union, Outer Mongolia, and North Vietnam. Even if a refugee succeeded in escaping across these portions of the frontier, which for the most part are tightly guarded on both sides, he would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. For this reason, no movement of refugees is known to be occur- ring across these sections of the Chinese frontier. In addition that part of the frontier which runs from Kashmir to northern Burma is so mountainous as to be out of the question except for mountain dwellers like the Tibetan refugees who have fled to India. For practical pur- poses, refugees from Communist China can escape only to Burma, Laos, the Portuguese colony of Macao off the China coast, and Hong Kong. Because of the personal freedom, economic opportunity, and accessibility to the outside world which it offers, Hong Kong has long served as a haven for emigrants from the mainland of China. The flaw grew to sizable proportions during the Chinese civil war of 1945-49 when 7 41. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE THREE MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNIST CHINA ? the Communists began their takeover. It remained large for a few years afterward, while the Chinese Communists were in the process of establish- ing their control over the mainland and liquidating real and suspected opponents. It included businessmen and intellectuals from centers like Shangl-ai, where Communist rule bore heavily on such people. More recent--: ly, as it has become increasingly difficult to cross Communist-controlled territory without authorization, which is extremely difficult to secure, the flow has tended to come almost exclusively from the neighboring pro- vince of Kwangtung. The current influx of refugees into Hong Kong is estimated at about 100,000 per year. It is composed mainly of Kwangtung peasants and small businessmen fleeing the "people's communes" and other manifesta- tions of the "great leap forward" that has racked the mainland of China since the spring of 1958. This movement of refugees is not the result of any encouragement by the government of Hong Kong; on the contrary the British, because of extremely aver-crowded living conditions in Hong Kong, find it necessary to enforce fairly stringent immigration restric- tions. If it were not for this, the movement of Chinese refugees into the 'city would undoubtedly be many times greater than it is now. At present about one-third of Bong Kong's total , -11 -tion of more than ? three million consists largest single bloc of Although the of refugees from the Chinese mainland -- the anti-Communist refugees in the world. vast majority of the refugees who have come to Hong Kong have been Chinese, there has also been a flow of non-Chinese 8 THE THREE MILLION R3FUGEES FROM COMMUNIST CHINA out of China. Of particular interest is the case of some 20,000 Russians who went to China (mainly Manchuria) after 1917 as refugees from com- munism in their own country, only to be caught by its Chinese version after 1949. About 12,000 have succeeded in getting out of China, mainly through Hong Kong. The others, who refuse to return to the Soviet Union and still remain under Chinese Communist control, are largely unemployed and in some cases have been moved from their homes to remote areas such as Sinkiang. Because it is smaller, more crowded and offers fewer economic opportunities, Macao holds much less attractiveness for refugees and has received far fewer of them (approximately 150,000 to 200,000) than has Hong Kong. More than 1,600 Chinese, most of them farmers, have fled to Macao since the commune system became Communist policy in September 1958. Many of them left behind on the mainland their families and personal belongings. Among others who have gone to Macao are a group of 120 Hind Chinese whom the Chinese Communists deported in 1958. Presumably they were unable to work and the regime, not wanting either to care for them or to bear the onus of liquidating them, found a convenient solution to its problem in this way. For various geographic and political reasons, the Chinese com- munity in Burma is the only one in Southeast Asia that has grown signif- icantly since World Ur II through immigration, as well as by natural increase. The census of 1941 put the Chinese community in Burma at 300,000. In 1953 the Burmese government, on the basis of a sampling of Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 9 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE THREE MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNIST CHINA 15 percent of the population, estimated the Chinese community at 6 per- cent of the total, or slightly over one million. There is no way of determining what part of the increase represents persons who have en- tered the country since 1949, but the number must be substantial.; a reasonable guess would be 100,000 to 150,000. Nor have all the arrivals in Burma been Chinese, for Yunnan contains a considerable population of tribesmen belonging to minority nationalities. Their customs and language have little or nothing in common with those of their Chinese rulers. In the spring of 1958 the Chinese Communists launched a harsh drive against traditional reli- gion, including the religion and customs of these Yunnanese tribesmen. This campaign was soon reinforced by the drive for the formation of "peoples communes," in the course of which Chinese Communist cadres and troops arrested a number of tribal chiefs, touched off a wave of suicides, and set a new wave of refugees in notion toward the Burmese frontier. To escape the communes a sizeable number of tribesmen, in- cluding entire families in some cases, fled to Burma even through the heavy rains of the monsoon season. On November 19, 1958, the New China News Agency reported that 77 percent of the tribesmen in Yunnan were in "people's communes." It seems likely that once the communes are firmly established, escape to Burma will be more difficult and the flow of refu- gees will diminish. The present population of the Kachin and Shan States 10 ? THE THREE MILLION REFUGEES FROI1 COMUNIST CHINA in Burma, which border on Yunnan, includes about 100,000 to 150,000 Chinese and approximately 50,000 tribesmen from Yunnan (Shan, Lisu, etc.). The nature and causes of the movement of refugees from Yunnan into Laos are very similar to the case of Burma. The anti-religious and commune campaigns of 1958 touched off a flow of tribesmen (mainly Shan, Yao, and Miao) into the valleys of Laos near the Chinese frontier. The total influx to date probably amounts to about 30,000. Some 2,000,000 of the refugees from Communist China in the last fourteen years have gone to Formosa; perhaps 100,000 or less have ulti- mately gone on to Japan, other parts of Southeast Asia, the United States, Brazil and Europe. Recent refugees from China report that Communist officials on patrol boats on the West and Pearl Rivers are shooting anyone attempting to escape to Macao Early in Kwangtung Province or Hong Kong. June of 1959, eight-four refugees from a commune in reached Macao in four fishing junks, the largest single group of refugees to reach Macao in several months. They said 36 others who fled with them have not been heard from and were doubtless caught by Communist patrols. The refugees, as have most recent ones, attributed their flight to the worsening food shortages in Communist China. The spokesman for the group said, "We were all practically starving to death." Another refugee said "The food shortage is the worst in ten years. The meat ration was down to eight ounces a month when we left, and there was no beef, eggs or fish, and very few vegetables." Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 11 .4 0 ?10 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 42e. THE THREE MILLION REFUGEES FROM COMMUNIST CHINA Several thousand fishermen who have taken refuge in Macao said they fled their Communist-controlled homeland because of high taxes on their catches. Most refugees, however, give as the reason for their flight the imposition of the communes with the subsequent disruption of family life. The fact that such an astonishing number of refugees as 3,000,000 have escaped from Communist China through the narrow exits available to them bears testimony not only to their courage and opposi- tion to communism, and to the true state of affairs in the mainland of China, but to the strong probability that if the exits were easier and more numerous the flow would be greater still. 12 I. [21 A REFUGEE'S REPORT ON LIFE IN A CHINESE COMMUNE By Li Yu-pao (Li Yu-pao? a 23-year old peasant from Chungshan county, KWangtung Province, is one of the thousands who fled the mainland after the commune system was introduced by the Chinese Communist regime in 1958.) I came to Macao with my wife, my year-old son, my cousin and his year-old son -- all packed in one sampan -- on April 25, 1959. The idea of escape had long been in Dv mind, but the final de- cision to run the risk came about by accident. One day, my cousin dropped into my village in Communist China on official business; he was there to peddle fish spawn for the marine products department of his commune. Since we were childhood friends and knew each other quite well, we generally talked to each other about everything we could think of. This time I was rather caught in a mixed feeling of fear and joy when he made it clear that he was ready to flee to Macao and wanted me to share the adventure. Since the decision had to be made almost on the spot, I nodded in consent without even blinking my eyes. The thing that really spurred me to be so desperate was that living conditions had been rapidly getting worse ever since the commune gysten was brought into effect several months ago. On that very evening, we took a sampan of the commune and managed to row into the Macao waters. We were lucky -- others have been killed while making the same attempt. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 13 Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 A REFUGEE'S REPORT ON LIFE INA CHINESE COMMUNE The commune in our area was started in late October of 1958. At first, it had three townships under its control; this was increased to seven or eight with a-total-population of about 50,000, including our village of some 3,000 people. The head of our township was Chief Wang; you might say that he had been elected, but we voters were may allowed to make our choice among a few officially-chosen candidates -- a "guided election." A candidate must be an "activist" or, better still, a loyal Communist Party member. He must blindly follow the Party line and merci- lessly report and eavesdrop on his neighbors, relatives and even on his own family members. The township also had a militia corps. Chief Wang was the "battalion commander"; the commune director, (the "Sheh Chang") is the regimental commander. There are seven companies in the battalion; each company is led by one commander and two deputy commanders who are appointed by the battalion commander. The size of the company ranges from 300 to 400 members; the next lower unit under the company is called "Haiao Tsu" (or team) which consists of 20 to 30 persons. The team leaders are picked by the company commanders from among the activists; their appointment must be approved by the battalion commander: Men from 18 to 45 must join the militia. The training is directed by the army. The annual training usually lasts ten days. All farm work during the training period must be done in the evenings, as the daytime is consumed on the drill ground. el" S. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? A REFUGEE'S REPORT ON LIFE IN A CHINESE COMMUNE The commune system is the worst thing that we have had since the Communists took over China. Most people could not refuse to join when told to al so; however, some people are not allowed to join, such as former land- lords and minor former Nationalist officials. But this doesn't mean they don't have to work. On the contrary, the commune assigns them to take up heavy labor under bad weather conditions -- during storms, heavy rain, or freezing night. The commune was organized by just one mass meeting. The leading official simply told the audience that at the conclusion of the meeting all the cooperatives of our village would be united into a new organization called "commune," a term new to all of us. At first we thought it just another method to broaden the regime's control over production; we hardly realized how much it would mean to our living conditions. In fact, some villagers were joyful over this announcement which was made very tempting by an official promise that from then on we all could eat as much as we wanted in the commune messhall. For nearly two months the state kept its promise. We had free meals and the rice ration was temporarily called off. But later facts proved that this is just a short-lived bait. Atter the commune was established, all members had to turn over to the commune all their farm tools. The commune claims ownership over anything that is registered with it. When the work day starts, the orig- inal owner may take out whatever tools he needs for the day and return the same to the commune's storehouse in the evening. In case of damage, the user has to pay for repair charges. 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ia 15 0 4.- Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ./ A REFUGEE 'S REPORP ON LIFE IN A CHINESE COMMUNE The first few months of commune life we were paid according to eight grades, ranging from approximately two yuan to eight yuan a month (approximately one to four U.S. dollars). I received Y4.50 monthly as a grade-4 worker. But I must point out that nearly one-half of the amount had to be left in the local bank; that is an order applying to all members. This pay system, however, was replaced by the "work point" system.in early March of 1959. I don't know exactly how regime officials assess the "work point," but I could accumulate as many as 200 "work points" per month to be paid at 3.5 cents (Communist currency) per point. In other words, I earned a bit more than under the previous pay scale. However, the worst part of this system is that you are not paid until after the season's harvest. From the time the system began until my escape on April 25, 1959 I 'worked nearly two months without pay. Even under the 8-grade scale, pay day was a mystery to all, for the amount of cash to be paid to each member was to be entirely dependent upon sales of the commune's by-products. In our commune those included shrimp-catching and duck-raising. The commune assigns these light jobs to the aged and physically weak members. When the products are sold, the profit is supposed to be paid to the members as part of their wage. Under ordinary circumstances, the work day begins at 5 a.m. and ends at 9 p.m. When transplanting of rice shoots got underway, we had to start work at 3 a.m. and continue to midnight. When an "emulation drive" was on, we kept the work going on a round-the-clock schedule. 16 A REFUGEE'S REPORT ON LIFE IN A CHINESE COMMUNE Two meals were served, at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m., with a per-meal rice ration of five hang (Chinese ounces). Under normal conditions all have their meals in the commune messhall? but meals are served right in the fields during harvest time. The ration wasn't enough even for a small person, and as for side dishes, we considered ourselves lucky when given a little vegetable. Before the Communists came to power, my parents were tenant farmers; we rented about 20 mou (one-third acre) of paddy-field, and father said we always had enough to eat; we even managed to have eggs, pork, fresh and salt fish from time to time. People 65 years of age or older receive only three ounces of rice per meal, but they don?t have to work in the fields; if they wish they can make a little extra money by raising ducks, tending to cattle, or baby- sitting. The rewards under the commune system are more honorary than mate- rial; more and more people, however, are becoming less and less interested in winning empty titles such as ?mod e- worker" and "labor hero." Recently cash rewards were introduced, but the amounts involved were too small to be tempting. For instance, a 50-cent bonus was paid to anyone capable of transplanting rice sprouts at the speed of two mou a day, a back-breaking quota even for the toughest worker. A "model worker" is one who can make or exceed this quota for three consecutive days. A grade-1 model worker is rewarded with a singlet, its front part bearing printed red characters "Lo Tung No Fan" (model worker), plus a cash bonus. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 17 44. fl \\. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 A REFUGEE'S REPORT ON LIFE INA CHINESE COMMUNE A labor emulation drive, or group competition, is held two to three times a year, depending on circumstances. Generally such a drive takes place during spring sowing or harvest time. The result is announced at a mass meeting, and the grade of each company is indicated by various symbols, such as a rocket, an airplane, a motorcar, a bicycle, an ox-cart, and a turtle, all on a blackboard by the entrance of the battalion head- quarters. There is no material reward except the now almost-meaningless red pennant. In the commune, it is permissible to rest only in the case of serious illness. There is one medical clinic in every township. The one in my hometown was poorly-equipped; it had very little medicine. There was one grade school in town. But most parents don't want their children to go to school for the simple reason that most of the class hours are used in labor activities of various kinds. Since there isn't much to learn from the school, the parents feel inclined to keep the chil- dren under their own protection. Until my departure, the school had about 100 students. There were literacy classes and evening schools during the initial stage of the commune. These classes were closed because of the heavy farm work schedule. There was one library stocked with picture books and simple reading materials, but it was seldom visited by the exhausted laborers. Since all able commune adults have to work in the fields, nurseries are provided to take care of the babies and toddlers. Those working in the 1 nurseries are aged women assisted by one or two young girls having some baby- 18 A REFUGEE'S REPORT ON LIFE IN A CHINESE COMMUNE care knowledge. At feeding time, the baby is taken to its mother in the field. If the mother has no breast-milk the baby is fed with rice gruel, the only infant food available. We do not expect life to be easy as refugees in Macao, but we know it will be better than living on a commune in Communist China. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 19 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 "THE COMMUNISTS CALLED US PARASITES..." By Don Carlos (Mr. Carlos is a newspaperman in Hong Kong) "There is no room for parasites," the young Communist Chinese officer told them. "You must leave the People's RepUblic!" They were told to climb onto a truck. A few hours later, they were near the border of the Portuguese colony of Macao. The group of about twenty fortUne-tellers? beggers and musicians was led by a six-year-old girl. They walked towards the Portuguese sentries standing at the Barrier Gate of Macao and silently stood in the front of the Macao Immigration officials. "More refUgees1" said the officer in charge. -Be picked up the registration book, and twenty more names were added to the bulky record of 150,000 to 200,000 refugees who for the last ten years have sought asylum in Macao. But there was something different about this grourfter each name the officer wrote in block letters, "GEGO." This is the Portuguese word for "blind." Since that day in August of 19572 more than 200 blind refugees have entered Macao. "There is little we can do for them," a Macao refugee official said. "But it is not so much what we can give, but what they have already achieved -- their freedom!" 20 - a "THE COMMUNISTS CALLED US PARASITES..." To cope with the increasing number of destitute Chinese refugees pouring into tiny Macao, the Portuguese authorities have from time to time built small camps for the escapees. There are several such camps on the Portuguese islands of Taipa and Coloane? less than half-a-mile away from Macao. The blind refugees also receive assistance from a number of charity organizations who are doing their best to cope with the situation. Nevertheless, the refugees cannot wholly depend on what material assistance they receive. At night, particularly in the summer, many Macao residents, mostly Chinese, go for long walks along the "avenidas" on the new Reclamation Area of Praia Grande. Enterprising Chinese have established open- air cafes, where hundreds of people sit and drink tea or soft drinks. There are juke boxes, record players, radios blaring away. Often loudspeakers from the Communist sports-ground just over the border broadcast Chinese Communist propaganda, and Communist songs can be heard only half a mile away. Amidst all this noise, scores of blind refugees can be seen on sidewalks, usually singing or playing musical instruments. At about midnight the traders begin to fold their tents, the little shops are locked up, lights begin to fade, and the blind refugees begin their journey "home." "Home" can be a corner in a small room already over-crowded by two or three Chinese families, or some little corner in some old verandah. At least 5C percent of their small earnings go toward rent. The 20C Dr more blind refugees in Macao have come mainly from the surrounding county of Chungshan4,ih Communist China. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 21 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 "THE COMMUNISTS CALLED US PARASITES..." They don't all tell the same story. Same say they were "told to get out." Others say simply: "I didn't want to stay there...I'm blind: but I 'saw' much. What I 'saw' made ne unhappy. I wasn't free. So I asked the Communists for a visa: and they gave it to me: I think gladly." Seventy-six-year-old Wong Foo-chin: born in Shekki: Chungshan: says that he and his family didn't suffer any bad treatment at the hands of the Communists. "I was told that there was nothing I could do to help build New China. It wasn't my fault: they often said that; but it wasn't their fault: either: they also said that quite often. 'You're a useless old blind beggar... you'll be better off in Macao, let the capitalists give you some of their money! And we'll be better off without you here. Our food should go to those Who work for it!' they said. So here I am!" The future of the blind refugees can be summed up in the words of Yung Shi-lee: a 28-year-old widow and mother of five. She says, while hugging her youngest baby: "We live from day to day. Sometimes we are hungry. But as long as we are alive: we can dream of better days ahead. We hope that: one day: something goodwill happen to us. We hope. That's all... And we are free." 22 trr. 4t-Aftlee- THE EUROPEAN REFUGFRS IN CHINA By Merle Parker (Commentator on Far Eastern Affairs) It is only natural that most of today's comment about refugees from communism is in terms of the millions who escaped from areas con- trolled by the Soviet Union and Communist China after World War II. For sheer drama, however, it is difficult to surpass a story which began more than 40 years ago in the mass upheavals which accom- panied the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. At that time, thousands of European or White Russians, alarmed by the early portents of Communist rule, left their native land for a new way of life in Manchuria and China. Today the survivors and descendants of these original Russian refugees, with the Chinese Communists now in power, are faced with a repetition of history. Once again they are seek- ing an escape from communism. When the European Russins first migrated to China after 1917, they found employment, established themselves in business and raised their families in the new environment. Serious problems, however, began to arise after World War II. The Soviet Union launched an extensive "return to the homeland" campaign designed to appeal to all persons who had ancestral ties with the USSR. Most of the Russians in China resisted this campaign, only to find themselves subject to new pressures when the Chinese Communists gained power in 1949. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 23 - Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE EUROPEAN REFUGWPC IN CHINA - In the meantime, efforts at resettlement in other countries provided solutions for many of the Furopeans. Between 1947 and 1952, the International Refugee Organization (IRQ) found new homes for 17,000. As part of this operation, the IRO established a camp in the Philippine Is- lands to which it moved some 5,500 individuals, predominantly Russians of the Eastern Orthodox:faith. All but 130 of these were subsequently re- settled in Australia, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile and the United States. The 130 remaining hard-to-resettle cases eventually found a way out of China through the World Council of Churches. In Belgium the En- traide Protestante provided accommodation in a home for 30 elderly refugees. France, which had already accepted over 70 persons with tuberculosis, agreed to take in additional difficult cases. Institutions under the di- rection of the Evangelical Church of Germany took 17. By April 1953, the Pacific Beach Camp in the Philippines had completed its task. Still in mainland China, however, are about 10,000 European Ref- ugees who have informed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that they will not return to the USSR and wish to settle overseas. Sev- eral hundred are past the age of 65, and it is estimated that there may be several hundred with chronic illnesses. Many are destitute. Recent developments, both political and economic, within Commu- nist China have made the position of the remaining refugees more precarious than ever, The Peiping regime, which had previously tolerated the exist- ence of some small businesses run by former Europeans, has now clamped down on them as part of a campaign to eliminate the last vestiges of pri- vate enterprise. This has deprived many refugees of their means of - ? - rHt EUROPEAN REFUGEES IN.CHIMA livelihood -- especially since most employment by state-owned industry is closed to them. Those unable to work are denied ration cards, and in addition, those who are not now employed are being moved to remote areas such as Sinkiang. A letter received by the World Council of Churches from a refugee still in China reported that "Those still employed (teachers; engineers, technicians) are hardly tolerated. One has to imagine the consequences of it all. We are strongly urged to return to our homeland /The USSR or to stay in China and help build communism." Another letter said, "I have several times refused to go to the USSR -- and I am refusing now. There is no other way, no other road for me but the road to a free world." A third letter, received recently, said "This is my last letter to you...we are not free to choose our own destiny." At a Geneva meeting of the Executive Committee of the High Com- missioner for Refugees Program, in January 1959, it was announced that, in addition to funds for the European refugees in China pledged at a Novem- ber 1958 meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration, a total of $923,000 had since become available for the transportation of European Refugees from Hong Kong, once they get out of China. Of this amount, $675,000 was pledged by the United States delegation, in advance of matching commitments from other nations. The United Kingdom Committee for World Refugee Year promised $168,000; the Government of Switzerland, $15,000 plus 100 air passages from Hong Kong to any destination in the world; Italy $15,000; and Denmark $14,500. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 25 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE EUROPEAN REFUGEES IN CHINA These funds, however, are only sufficient to move 3,200 refugees from Hong Kong. The High Commissioner for Refugees, Dr. Auguste R. Lindt, has reported that $4,620000 would be necessary to evacuate the remaining European refugees from Communist China. The High Commissioner's Office has also reported that in most instances it is "now, or not at all," for those who remain in Communist China. Dr. Edgar H.S. Chandler) Director of Refugee Servicelbr the World Council of Churches) observed that action soon "may make the difference between life or death for some thousands of people who have already suffered cruelly because of their love of freedom." These people have succeeded in fleeing communism for the second time. Shown here boarding a plane in Hong Kong for eventual resettlement elsewhere in the free world, they are some of the thousands of White Russians who went to China after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. After the Communist take-over of China, they refused to return to the USSR, and recent developments within China, both political and economic, have made their position there more precarious than ever. There are still 10,000 of these European refugees in mainland China who have informed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that they wish to settle somewhere in the free world. Several hundred are past the age of 65, and many more chronically ill or destitute. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 "-. Refugees fleeing from North to South Korea between 1945 and 1951 braved almost insurmount- able obstacles to get away from Communist "liberation" in the North. During that time, more than two and a half million persons fled to the Republic of (South) Korea. Here refugees crawl perilously over the shattered girders of the bridge at Pyongyang, North Korea, as they flee south across the river in December of 1950 to escape the onrushing Chinese Communists. THE REFUGEE FLIGHT FROM COMMUNIST NORTH KaREA These Korean refugees are some of the more than a Invasion of Seoul, rather than repeat the experiences occupation of the capital and other cities. million persons who fled the second they endured in the original Communist By Merle Parker ?.? No one who was in Korea between 1945 and 1951 will ever forget the seemingly endless lines of refugees -- men, women and children moving slowly southward in a kind of silent repudiation of the Communist regime in the north. In the five years of this voluntary exodus, more than two and a half million persons managed to reach the Republic of (South) Korea. A million others died of exposure, starvation or disease, most of these perishing from the nightmarish conditions .they encountered in their escape from the Communist terror. Refugees braved almost insurmountable obstacles. In addition to the hazards of weather and terrain, they faced Communist border guards acting under orders to shoot to kill. Many embarked on the long journey with insufficient food and clothing. Illnesses soon developed. But their courage seldom faltered. The historic southward migration, which began as a trickle shortly after Korea was divided at the 38th parallel in mid-1945, had become a flood by 1946. Four years later an estimated 1,800,000 Koreans already had arrived at their destinations below the Communist border. Others were enroute and, far to the north, thousands more were preparing to follow. Throughout this time of unrest, the political division of Korea continued. The Soviet Union, although it had agreed at a 1945 foreign ministers' conference to a joint trusteeship for Korea, resisted all efforts in this , 29 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 .?? Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE REFUGM FLIGHT FROM COMMUNIST NORTH KOREA. direction. In 1948, the Soviets established their own puppet government in North Korea. Korea's southern half became the Republic of Korea the same year and was recognized by the United Nations as the country's only lawful government. 141,n Communist forces from North Korea invaded the Republic of Korea on June 25, 1950, a second refugee wave was set in motion, but the invasion was so rapid that only a few hundred thousand had time to flee before it. Fleeing Koreans crowded the roads in a desperate attempt to reach safety and escape the advancing Communist military forces. Thousands died on the highways. Families were separated and pathetic bands of lost children were a common sight. A third tide of refugees moved southward when the armies of Communist China attacked the United Nations forces defending the Republic of Korea a few months later. In the middle of one of the coldest winters in Korean history, the refugee throngs encountered hardship after hardship. Snow and freezing tem- peratures added to their miseries. The Taedung River near Pyongyang, in Communist North Korea, presented a typical picture. Some fortunate refugees were able to get across on flatboats or barges. Others were forced to wade through ice-clogged water in traversing the missing spans of a wrecked bridge. When the Communists entered Seoul for the second time, in January of 1951, that city of around 1.5 million had almost emptied itself. Only 100,000 had escaped before the first Communist occupation, but more than a 3?) ? .010 THE REFUGPR FLIGHT FROM COMMUNIST NORTH KOREA' million fled from the second invasion, rather than repeat the experiences they had endured in the original Communist occupation of Seoul and other cities. By boxcar, truck and cart, by bicycle and on foot, the refugees fled south. Th& snow-dusted roads were streaks of movement; the clean lines of railroad tracks, as seen from the air, were obscured by the thousands moving along them. Every stream had a border of people trying to drink or wash. One of those who saw the refugee exodus at first hand, wrote in January 1952: "By every possible kind of conveyance and on foot or even crawling on their hands or knees, they took to the roads, and when these were filled swarmed across mountains. They crossed streams whose bridges had been blown up, pulling themselves by freezing hands on girders sticking out of the water. They clung to the tops or sides of trains -- and many froze and fell under the wheels. Many suffocated in freight cars packed with humanity. "Innumerable children, women and men died. Tens of thousands of families were separated. Mothers died in the snow beside the road, their babies crying on their backs. The personal tragedies were many. There are stories of the ten-year-old orphan girl who found a child crying in the streets, and carried the two-year-old on her back for weeks on the refugee road to the south until they both found a haven." Many refugees were created by Communist guerrilla activity-. Bands hid in the mountains, descended on the villages at night to loot and burn. They carried off food and clothing, even stripping the people who fell into their hands. nprlassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Co .y Approved for Release THE REFUGEE FLIGHT FROM COMMUNIST NORTH KOREA So many-refugees headed for the Pusan area that it was necessary to set up road blocks to shunt part of the flood to southwest Korea. Many refugees were taken to Koje Island. When UN troops were forced out of the northeast at Hungnam, ships carried over 100,000 civilians to Pusan. Most of these later reached Koje. Another naval and air evacuation from the Seoul area carried tens of thousands to the large southwestern island of Chejudo. Thera were many incredible rescue accounts. On December 22, 1950, the freighter MEREDITH VICTORY crept up to the dying city of Hungnam to pick up some battle-tired UN officers. Most ships and all but a few rear-guard troops had left the city; only continuous bombardment of the hills kept the Communists from descending. The enemy had vowed in broadcasts to'behead all Koreans "corrupted" by United Nations influence, but for two days thousands of Korean civilians had been sitting helplessly at the waterfront. The freighter had space for only 12 passengers and a 46-man crew, little food, water, or sanitary facilities. But it could not leave the refugees behind: by the time it left Hungnam the next morning, all holds were full and the decks were brimming. In the four days it took the MEREDITH VICTORY to reach Koje Island, the refugees had only one meal of cooked rice, picked up at Pusan, and five children had been born in the crowded holds, but the unbelievable number of 15,000 persons had been carried to freedom in one shipload. In South Korea, an estimated four persons out of ten were, at one time or another, refugees. During the summer of 1950, the Communists, destroyed 32 1 na c 4 50-Yr 2014/04/03 CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ?????? THE REFUGEE FLIGHT FROM COMMUNIST NORTH KOREA many farms and building. An estimated 600,000 homes were burned or otherwise ruined in the first year and a half of Korean fighting. Many refugees lived in "homes" which consisted of a hole dug into the side of a hill, roofed over by poles, straw and dirt. A higher proportion of educated than of uneducated people fled from the Communist terror because they had been marked for liquidation for defying the totalitarian regime. An armistice agreement was signed on July 27, 1953, after three years of war. In addition to the two and a half million refugees who had fled to the free south, 22,500 North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war refused repatriation to the north. An additional 62,000 North Korean soldiers who had not been prisoners also chose to stay in the free Republic of Korea. ri in Part Sanitized Coov Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03 CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 33 , 1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release I CHOSE FREEDOM IN SOUTH KOREA By Jai Duk Han , (Jai Duk Han, who recently fled to South Korea, is a former editor of the daily newspaper Minloo Chosuns the Communist regime's organ in Pyongyang North Korea. The 49-year-old career journalist, who was once a favorite of Kim Il Sung, the puppet Premier, had been a member of the Communist Party for more than 12 years. In July.1953 he VAS sent to japan as a Communist agent, where he remained until 1959 when he obtained asylum in the Republic of Korea.) Before I was sent to Japan as a Communist agent in 1953, I was one of the editors for the Soviet and Chinese Communist-controlled regime of North Korea. However, I was never able to express myself freely. Under the Communists, a newspaperman has no freedom of speech. He merely speaks and mrites what the rulers of the country dictate. I was under control of the propaganda chief of the North Korean Communist Party. Though newspapers were censured by the Soviet Army head,- quarters, the Communist Party, and the propaganda ministry, I nevertheless lived in constant fear of a mistaken word or phrase for which I might be charged. As a matter of fact, my life as an editor ended when I placed Stalin's photograph on the second page instead of the front page of our paper. In a series of purges, I was reduced from my position as editor to a lowly reporter on a Communist magazine. 34 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 , I CHOSE FREEDOM IN SOUTH KOREA What is the real situation in North Korea? Contrary to the alleged Communist ideology of "an equal life for equal labor," there has been formed in North Korea -- as in all Communist-ruled countries -- a new privileged class of a few Communist officials who enjoy extreme luxuries at the coat of the blood and sweat of the people. There is no human dignity, decency, freedom, or any basic rights for the people. Freedom exists only for the top leaders of the Communist Party. For the rank and file under this Communist dictatorship, there is only hardship, fear and unrest. In North Korea all elections are unanimous, whether they take plaoe within the Communist Party, the People's Committee or the so-called Fatherland Front meetings. When I asked my superiors what would happen if there was a dissenting vote, they criticized me severely for being cynical. Speakers discussing Communist Party policy or contention always employ the stereotyped phrase: "I fully support the report." Without instruction from the Soviet Communist Party, the North Korean Labor (Communist) Party cannot act of its awn accord. Party officials justify this by saying this is symbolic of the international unity of the proletariat. The food ration classifications are divided into as many as ten grades, and the rations for the masses are insufficient for proper subsistence. On the other band, the ration given to the privileged class exceeds their needs. This extra food for the privileged class is used as a weapon to maintain loyalty of the top echelons of the Party. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 35 ?% Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ? eAk ?1111.11" I CHOSE FREEDOM IN SOUTH KOREA About the time the Korean conflict ended (July 1953) I was smuggled into Japan, against my objections, as an agent for the Communists. My under- cover mission was to promote North Korean-Japan goodwill. In Japan, it was possible for me to observe world trends as well as to compare North and South Korea from a new perspective. Gradually I developed doubts about communism, which finally led to complete rejection of it. It was at this stage that some leaders among Korean residents in Japan suggested I visit South Korea. The trip has disproved many false claims by the Communists about the lack of happiness and freedom in the South. A brief tour along the streets of Seoul has shown me that every shop and store here is full of domestic products. Citizens enjoy a prosperous life. I have had an opportunity to acquaint myself with the real situation in South Korea. I have visited factories, cultural and educational facilities, and social work installations. Many thousands of textile machines were at work, and many good home products abound in the markets. The bookstores are filled with new publications. The schools of each level are fully occupied by students, and great crowds throng the theatres to see locally-node pictures. I see friendly persons happily listening to music, and in the streets I see people with bright faces and clean clothes. All this convinces me that I made the right decision when I came to South Korea. Now that I have known freedom, I can fully testify before the conscience of all mankind that communism is a dreadful cult of fallacy, deception 36 r I CHOSE FREEDOM IN SOUTH KOREA and slavery, ruled by terror. Under the Communist monolithic rule, a man no longer lives but merely exists -- a machine completely at the mercy of the dic- tators. 37 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Happily clutching packages of rice and fish, refugees from Communist rule in North Vietnam leave a trans- port for their new homes in the free south. Within eight months of the mid-1954 partition of Vietnam, nearly one million Vietnamese had fled from the Communist-controlled north to live and work in the free south. The French and American ships of the "Passage to Freedom" operation which carried the refugees south had to wait three miles offshore for the escapees' frail boats and water- logged rafts to meet them. One of the most extraordinary mass movements of modern times took place in the last half of 1954, when almost a million Vietnamese fled from Communist-controlled North Vietnam to the free south. Refugees who managed to reach the sea, where French and American ships were waiting beyond the Vietminh territorial waters, risked further danger from Communist gunfire and also from the waves and winds that engulfed their frail boats. Here citizens of Hai Lang Dis- trict, Ouang Tri Province, in central Vietnam, welcome thirty refugees from North Vietnam as their boat is about to dock for the first time on free soil. OPERATION EXODUS: THE FLIGHT OF A MILLION VIETNAMESE FROM COMMUNISM By Merle Parker One of the most extraordinary mass movements of modern times took place in the last half of 1954, when almost a million Vietnamese fled from the Communist?controlled northern part of their homeland to the free south. It was a movement of a kind that had already taken place in the Soviet Union, in satellite East Europe, in China and in Korea. The Vietnamese exodus began on July 21, 1954, when seven years of civil war in Indochina came to an end. An armistice, signed at Geneva by the French government and the Communist?controlled Viet Minh Army, had partitioned Vietnam. The Communists got all Vietnamese territory north of the 17th parallel ? more than half of the country and the population. One of the most important provisions of the armistice agreement said that "From the date of entry into force of the present Agreement until the movement of troops is completed, any civilians residing in a district controlled by one party who wish to go and live in the zone assigned to the other party shall be permitted and helped to do so by the authorities in that district." When this article (14?D) of the Geneva Armistice Agreement went into effect, the new government of President Ngo Dinh Diem in the free South was only two weeks old, but tens of thousands of refugees were already converging on the northern capital of Hanoi for evacuation south. The mass exodus had begun. 39 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 4.? ? OPERATION EXODUS: THE FLIGHT OF A MILLION VIETNAMESE FROM COMMUNISM There were students, teachers, civil servants and other professional people. There were also farmers, fishermen, skilled and unskilled workers. All had tasted seven years of communism under the Viet Minh and wanted no more. Some of them were Buddhists, some were Christians. Finally, there were ethnic minority groups like the 40,000 Nung tribesmen from Mon-Cai, and the 2,000 Thais and Meos -- nomadic mountaineers. Bui-Chu and Phat-Diem, predominantly Catholic provinces 80 kilometers southeast of Hanoi, had been engulfed by the Viet Minh while the cease-fire was being negotiated. The Communist occupation brought to the people brutal corroboration of what their priests had warned: communism would never tolerate the practice of their or any other religion. The people from these two provinces were the first Vietnamese refugees. By working day and night the Diem government quickly completed evacuation plans for the refugees. Evacuees from the provinces in the north were to be assembled in temporary camps around Hanoi or sent on to Haidung and Haiphong; at these staging centers they would be registered and processed for air or sea transport. With French and American aid, air and sea transport was organized between the northern staging centers and reception centers in the South. There the refugees would be given food, clothing, money, sleeping mats, blankets, rice bowls, cooking utensils, firewood, necessary medicines and vaccines, DDT powder and condensed milk for babies. So quickly did the flood of refugees rise, however, that the govern- ment of South Vietnam was nearly swamped: in the pe21c month of September 1954, more than 200,000 refugees arrived in the south. 140 OPERATION EXODUS: THE FLIGHT OF A MILLION VIETNAMESE MICH COMMUNISM At the same time the Diem Government helped 140,000 Communists -- mostly soldiers and their families -- reach the North. It soon became evident that the Communist Viet Minh, dishonoring their own signatures, were doing everything possible to stop the refugees who wanted to go South. The International Control Commission, which arrived in Vietnam in August 1954, found the Viet Minh flagrantly violating the Armistice Agreement by holding back all prisoners of war, military and civilian. The prisoners were to have been released within 30 days of the cease-fire. Other Vietnamese also were prevented from leaving the North. Those who did manage to escape told haw the Communists were attempting to hold people back by refusing to allow them to sell their land or houses, or by physically barring their way, even to the extent of dragging refugees off the roads. No one with children was allowed to use any kind of outward bound transportation. Husbands were separated from wives; children from mothers; individual hostages were held on fabricated pretexts. It is impossible to go any distance in the North Vietnam. delta without having to cross rivers and streams, so the Communists destroyed the bridges, and forbade:. ferryboats to carry the refugees. No one suspected of being a refugee was allowed to board passenger barges leaving for Hanoi. If a father or mother did slip aboard with children, Viet Minh officials took the children off by.force. Intimidation, physical violence, barricades, gunfire -- dozens of documented eyewitness accounts by those who did reach the south told the story of such Communist attempts to prevent the migration. 41 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 1 OPERATION EXODUS: THE FLIGHT OF A KUHN VIETNAMESE FROM COMMUNISM One report, a matter of public record with the International Control Commission, related that on January 12, 1955, Viet Minh troops attacked the villagers of Luu NV, a town 80 kilometers northwest of Vinh. There a large group of Catholic refugees had gathered to make their way to freedom. To break up the group, the Viet Minh Communists resorted to machin6 guns and rifles. Sixteen innocent people were killed. When the Viet Minh did allow people to gather in staging areas for eventual departure south, living conditions were made as miserable as possible. In Phat Diem 30 to 40 refugees were squeezed into a small room, and more than a hundred lived in a cellar. Concentrated for months in this same place, the refugees gradually spent what little money they had been permitted to take with them, and were finally compelled to sell their clothes or a last priceless possession -- a cradle, a set of teacups, a painting -- to buy food. Hungry mothers, physically unable to nurse their babies, were forced to feed them rice soup. Under such conditions many persons died from cholera, dysentery and other diseases. No medical services or drugs were provided by the Communists. Refugees who managed to reach the sea, where French and American ships were waiting beyond the Viet Minh territorial waters -- the Communists had refused them permission to approach the shore -- risked further danger. Tnis came not only fraa the waves, winds and tides that sometimes engulfed their frail boats and water?logged rafts and swept them overboard, but from the Communists who shot and wounded many before they could reach the rescue ships. French planes also carried 3,000 refugees a day. Between August 9 and - 112 .4\ OWNI ? '6 srez."111 =E, OPERATION EXODUS: ME FLIGHT OF A MILLION VIETNAMESE FROM COMMUNISM September 16 of 1954, these planes made 2,088 round trips between Hanoi and Saigon. When the last communist soldiers had reached the North, the Viet Minh regime refused to allow anymore refugees to leave the North. Not a single refugee has since been able to come south officially. Despite the Communists' obstructive tactics, the great exodus from the north had swelled to a total of nearly one million refugees and other displaced persons before the Viet Minh stopped it altogether. Why did so many leave their ancestral homes and possessions? They sought freedom and the right to practice their own. religion. Mr. Due Quang, a refugee Buddhist priest now in South Nrietnam, said Communist officials intentionally schedule political meetings at the same time Buddhist rites are being conducted and that along with the rest of the population, Buddhist followers are forced to attend the Comunist rallies. He noted that three Buddhist monks from the pagoda of Dan Vien in Thanh Hoa Province were executed on false treason charges. Other refugees told of the sentencing of Father Pham Van Tan, pastor of the Catholic Mission in the North Vietnam city of Phat Diem, to five years in prison on false charges of forging circulation cards which allowed people to move freely and accomplish "misdeeds" -- that is, go to the south. Tran Soc, once a resident of Phuoc in Nam Dinh Province, told refugee officials he escaped to the South after the Viet Minh threatened him with imprisonment if his son, a member of the Vietnamese National Army, did not return to the North. Trinh Huynh Thai, a Chinese merchant from Hanoi, said 143 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release OPERATION EXODUS: THE FLIGHT OF A MILLION VIETNAMESE FROM COMMUNISM "I decided to leave because I could not live under a regime fpunded on suspicion and oppression. It was incompatible to my conception of the dignity of a human being." A doctor said be escaped to the South when he got in trouble with the Viet Minh for failing to attend a political meeting. He had been with a critically ill patient at the time. He was told that his duty to the state was of first importance, and his patients should receive secondary consideration. Than Van Thi, a refugee teacher, said one of the first goals of the Communist regime was to divide the family. Wives were told to spy on husbands, and school children on their parents. Young women were forbidden to marry landowners or lintellectualsl." Nguyen-Due Khoi, a resident of Tan An Nghe Province, wrote to the International Control Commission: "My family consists of five people. According to the Geneva Agreement, we had the right to mime to the South. However, when we left our village, the Communists used every means to prevent our going. They arrested gr younger brother and myself and made us stand in the cold water of a river for an hour. They took our money, clothing, and tied our hands behind our backs before throwing us in prison. We were naked, and our legs were tied to a heavy wooden stanchion day and night. We were beaten from time to time, and one of my arms was broken." Early in 1955 the Viet Minh requested the International Control Commission to investigate the refugee situation in the South, claiming that thousands who wanted to return to the North were being prevented from doing so. )414 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 '7,71 -rd 0,71,73=733 A:a ,~77; r. ? 11.7177 OPERATION EXODUS: THE FLIGHT OF A MILLION VIETNAMESE FROM COMMUNISM The Commission, accompanied by Viet Minh delegates, made a complete ir.esti- gation, and found only one person out of the 800,000 who had fled by then who wanted to return to the Communist-ruled North. Few Vietnamese have managed to escape since the Viet Minh lowered the "Bamboo Curtain." Since May 1955 the number of refugees coming from the north has been relatively insignificant, with probably less than 50 per month escaping. 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 h5 =-? Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 111,1111.11,11.1 THE NEWEST ESCAPE FROM COMMUNISM: THE REFUGEES FROM TIBET By Merle Parker Communist China's brutal subjugation of Tibet in March 1959, and the flight of the Dalai Lama, added drama to the exodus of some 16,000 Tibetans into India during 1959. Strafed And bombed by the Chinese Communists during their escape, these refugees walk the last few miles to a temporary camp in India. The escapees Included many wounded in the fighting at Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. In April and May of 1959 a new group of refugees from communism were added to the 12,000,000 who have fled the Sino-Soviet orbit since World War II. During the two months which followed the uprising in Lhasa in March 195,, more than 13,000 Tibetans undertook the hazardoue. month-long route to freedom in India and the Himalayan states of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. An estimated 8,000 Tibetans had already escaped during the years following the communist invasion in 1950. The escape of these thousands -- merchants, herdsmen, laborers, anti- Communist fighters, monks and lamas -- was as eloquent in its own way as the spectacular escape at the end of March 1959 of Tibet's religious and temporal leader, the young Dalai Lama. On March 17 the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa in secrecy because Tibetans feared he might be abducted by the Chinese Communists. Accompanied by his mother, two sisters, a younger brother and a small group of Tibetan rebels, he passed through heavy Chinese troop concentrations around the capital, and evaded search planes and tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers sent to intercept his party. Heading south across the most forbidding mountain country in the world, for fifteen days the Dalai Lama and his tiny retinue travelled by foot and mule- back, crossing a windswept plateau, rugged mountains and 16,000-foot passes. He travelled mostly at night. Some of the Tibetan refugees who have reached safety in India rest before going on to camps provided by the Indian government. The first groups which fled included merchants, fighters, herdsmen, peasants, laborers, and a dozen monks, including a living Buddha from a monastery. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THt NEWEST ESCAPE FROM COMMUNISM: THE REFUGEES FROM TIBET On March 31 the Dalai Lama crossed into the northeast Indian province of Assam. The Indian Government subsequently offered him asylum and be took up residence in Mussoorie, in the west Himalayan foothills about 135 miles from New Delhi. By the end of April, despite strafing and bombing on the caravan trails and in the mountain passes by Chinese Communist planes, an estimated 7,000 Tibetans had managed to reach India and were making their way to a camp near Tezpur. By mid-May the number had reached more than 13,000. The Indian government granted political asylum to all those who fled and made arrangements to shelter and feed the Tibetans after their long journeys through mountainous terrain. Medical supplies, food and clothing for the refu- gees were donated from free countries in Asia and other parts of the world. In Misamari, 25 miles from Tezpur, where most of the refugees have been settled, a hospital and other health facilities were readied. On May 13 the first group of 92 Tibetan escapees, ranging in age from nine to 70, were welcomed to the refugee camp at Misamari. Many of them had been walking for almost two months, coming through the Tulung La (pass), southeast of Tsena Dzong, toward Towang strip -- which has been, described as one of the most difficult journeys in the world. Most of the refugees were in rags, and many had bandages covering bullet wounds sustained either during the fighting in Lhasa, or en route. One refugee, Pochkar Rinpochi, said he saw Chinese Communist planes machine-gunning fleeing refugees and dropping bombs on the escape road at Phanpo south of Lhasa. Other refugees described strafing attacks and bomb- ings in the Lbikh area. 118 THE NEWEST ESCAPE FROM COMMUNISM: THE REFUGEES FROM TIBET The first refugees said that additional thousands were fleeing be- hind them because of Chinese Communist persecution and the indoctrination pre- gram, which had been stepped up following the Dalai Lama's escape to India. One of the first arrivals, a lama from a monastery in Lhasa, said be fled on March 21, four days after the Dalai Lama's departure. He reported: "The Chinese were bombing Lhasa. My parents advised me to flee because I mould not be safe in Lhasa. After we had crossed the Tsangpo River, we heard that the Chinese were bombing and machine-gunning the capital." The second group of arrivals, reaching India on May 15, was headed by Tutin Chotuk, Civil Governor of Lhoka, southeast of Lhasa, one of Tibet's most heavily populated provinces. Chotuk said: "We did not have the arms to fight the Chines. -- we are a religious country and we did not want to fight any more." He added that there was no hope of wives and families following them, and said "We hope to get back to Tibet some day, but we do not know whether it will be possible." Tutin Thuchin, the 70-year-old Abbott (head lama) of the Potala palace in Lhasa, arrived in mid-May after a trip on horseback lasting almost two months. He said "countless people" had been killed, and added: "They were doing it through wantonness. We were forced out as a result of the fight- ing. There was bombing and rifle fire which we could not stand. I escaped from the Potala while it was being bombarded. It was a dark night and I WRS unable to sea the full amount of damage." A. monk frau Drepung, Tibet's largest Bnddhist monastery, located near Lhasa, said only 3,000 of the monastery's 8,000 monks were still in the build- ing when he escaped on April 8. The monastery has been converted into a school where Tibetan children are receiving Communist indoctrination, he added. 149 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release THE NEWEST ESCAPE FROM COMMUNISM, THE REFUGEES TIBET The Sakhya Lama, third-ranking ecclerlastical figure in the Tibetan . hierarchy, arrived in Sikkim on May 20 with his/mother, sister, and 12 high lamas. Shigatse, site of the Sakhya Lames monastery, is 150 miles directly north of Gangtok and about 35 miles north of the border between Tibet and Sikkimgan.Indian protectorate between Bhutan and Nepal. The 15-year-old lama and his party, trekking almost without halt, took seven days and six nights to %leach SiRkinto They took a zigzag route to avoid Chinese troops patrolling the border. Another group of 600 refugees from Tibet, which'arrived in West Bengal through Bhutan over the week-end of May 16-17, included the governor of Naiad- zong Province, his wife and son. On May 21, another high-ranking lama, Way& Karmapa, head of the Karma Khagyut, one of the leading groups of the "Red Hat" sect of Tibetan Buddhism, arrived safely in India. One group of Tibetan re- fugees included fifteen Chinese soldiers who had joined the rebels during their fight in Lhasa. A-spokesman for another group of refugees said late in May, "We do not want the imposition of communism on Tibetans nor do we like Chinese in- tervention in our religious affairs." He attributed the mass migration of Tibetans to 'Dna to the "destruction of monasteries and killing of monks and lamas by Chinese troops." He added that a large number of Tibetans had been killed, wounded or captured while attempting to cross the border. Thousands of Tibetans who wanted to join in the march to India were unable to do so. An estimated 65,000 were killed in the fighting or while attempting to escape. Lhasa was turned into a city of women and children as thousands of men were loaded into trucks and taken to forced labor camps. 50 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE NEWEST ESCAPE FROM COMT4UNISM: THE REFUGEES FRCH TIBET The Fatale. at Lhasa *was extensively damaged by Chinese artillery and the Communists poured hundreds of artillery shells into the Norbulingka palace as well. Other buildings in the capital were heavily damaged: Chakport Medical College and the Ramoche Monastery, the chief training center of Tibetan Buddhism, were both destroyed, jokang, the principal temple in Lhasa, was desecrated. The three most important monasteries oflibet Drepung, Sera, and Andung were subjected to shelling and devastation, one refugee said, and the Chinese Communists also burned down Kundeling and Chomoling monasteries. A June 5 report made at the request of the International Commission of Jurists at Geneva, by Purshottam Trikamdas, general secretary of the Indian Commission of Jurists, said there is a "prima facie case that on the part of the Chinese there has been an attempt to destroy tht. nationalethical, racial and religious group of Tibetans by killing members of the group and by causing serious bodily and mental harm. These acts constitute the crime of genocide (the mass destruction of peoples7 under the genocide convention of the United Nations of 1948". Today refugees continue to flee Tibet in a steady trickle past the close Chinese Communist frontier surveillance. Officials working with the refugees in India believe the number of those escaping in the new influx since April 1959 may eventually reach 20,000. ? V41 53. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE TIBETAN REFUGEES SPEAK (From a Report by The International Commission of Jurists) - (On July 24, 1959, the International Commission of Jurists released a report on Tibet under the Chinese Communists, titled "The Question of Tibet and the Rule of Law." The Commission, a non-government- al organization which has Consultative Status with the . United Nations Economic and Social Council, seeks to foster understanding of and respect for the Rule of Law. Its headquarters are in Geneva. The following statements by Tibetan refugees who have .fled their Communist-contro/led homeland and are now in India are quoted from Document 21 of the ICJ report,) Statement by Chaehoe Nameyal Dorie (a former Governor of a Province under the Chinese). "From 1955 .you will cause me to "The story till now the story of the fighting if it is to be told to. shed tears of blood. is not of a class or party -- not of the upper strata, not 'the ordinary man, these are not the only ones who suffer. Perhaps our country does not mean anything to most people. We have not much. Ours is a barren land. We make no show, no cars, no hotels. We are insignificant -- no aeroplanes to fight. But human beings are massacred in my country... "I come from Do-Kham and belong to Derge District, which has about 50,000 people. There are 500 bigger monasteries alone in this area. In 1950 the Chinese came over to my area and declared they have come to bring in reforms and to secure .justice for the benefit of the people -- protecting their allegiance 52 ? THE TIBETAN REFUGEES SPEAK to the principles of equality, fraternity and brotherhood. They said that not even a needle or thread will be taken from the Tibetan people unjustifiably. Thousands of books and pamphlets were distributed for propaganda on these lines and giving assurance that no single Tibetan even will be molested. From 1950- 1953 the Chinese followed a soft policy with this propaganda. In 1953-56 Chinese started oppression and a more rigid control over the Tibetans was turned on. "In 1956 the Chinese announced their policy of the so-called 'Road to Socialism'. The Chinese first turned their offensive against the monasteries. In 1956 a gruesome incident happened in the famous monastery Peyu Compa which had 1,500 monks. The head of the monastery, a reincarnate Lama called Dalia- Dezer, 44 years old, was made nude, bound with ropes and dragged along the ground from the hill-top where was mangled and his intestines respected that the earth under the monastery was situated. As a result his body came out. This Lama was very popular and so his feet was taken and kept as holy sacrament. "In Parpong Monastery comprising 1,700 monks, the Head Abbot (reincarnate) called Wangyal Rimpoche, aged 39 years, was kept handcuffed with 'Russian Steel' for twenty-eight days, with the result that his wrists got fleeced of flesh to the bones. Today he is in Bhutan -- his hands beat the marks...The monasteries had granaries with stocks of grain to last for years. The Chinese emptied these granaries and so compelled the monks to leave those places. "I am a witness to all these because I was working with the Chinese as a Tushi(governor)...My experience of four years' work with the Chinese convinced nprlassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03 ? CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 53 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ^ THE TIBETAN REFUGEES SPEAK me that their propaganda was false and that their real intention was to exterminate us as a race and destroy our religion and culture. In 1958 the daily ration for a man in those areas was only two chatangs of grain or rice. We had to pay many taxes, a tax even for the possession of furniture. If we had an extra shirt, a tax had to be paid for it twice a year. If we had no means to pay the taxes, we had to hand over our clothes and even the drink- ing glasses we had. "Even then all my people meeting in assembly begged the Chinese to take away all they had but to leave them their religion and their way of life. The Chinese replied that they were mistaken in believing' in their Gods. The Chinese officer of Dorge said that Tibetan Gods are as like rats and dogs and wolves. Communists are enemies not only to Buddhism but to all religion. It has been told to me that more than 2,000 Lamas had been killed by the Chinese. I have personal knowledge of such attacks on 17 Lamas. "Even if no help, is coming we shall fight to death. We fight not because we hope to win but that we cannot live under communism. We prefer death. We are fighting not for a class or sect. We are fighting for our religion, our country, our race. If these cannot be preserved we will die a thousand deaths rather than surrender these to the Chinese." Statement of Andu Loto Phontso "I, Phontso, was in Litang (Kham) when the Communists came in 1950. In the beginning their manner of dealing with us was persuasive. This went on-till 1955. When the Chinese found that we would not accept their ways by 54 ? THE TIBETAN REFUGEES SPEAK giving up our religion and our ancient culture they became agressive. Then the Chinese told us that there were only two ways and we were asked to choose one. 'There is the white way which is the road to communism and there is the black way which would lead to the destruction of everything you possess -- life, property, religion, social institutions. Choogefahatiyou want'. If my people take the so-called white way our religion is gone, our tradition is gone, our race is gone. So many people with full consciousness accepted the so-called black way. 'Even if our lives are destroyed we won't accept the white way', we replied. After the reply an unprecedented calamity descended on us 4 It was as if we were being attacked by worms from above and ants from below." Phontso ended his long narrative by saying: "Indulzing in wanton and cruel shooting, the Chinese destroyed many lives. Litang was reduced to half by massacre. Of the remaining, one-half are living a perilous life staying in the jungle but resisting the Chinese authorities. With no shelter and with few clothes they are living in famine conditions, subsisting on roots, etc. They can have no contact with their people, the women and children, who, even without provocation, are harassed. There are cases of women, whose husbands are away in the jungles, who have jumped into torrents with their children because they found life unbearable. In Litang we are a deeply religious people. But the Giants. go on accusing us of violent acts to have a pretext to terrorise the people. The atrocities of the Chinese have made us desperate. "I, Loto Phontso, resisted the Chinese for two years. In 1957 I gave up whatever I had and escaped to India. My brother is continuing his fight -- narrowly escaping many times from the Chinese. npelassified in Part Sanitized COPY Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03 ? CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 !,a Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ' THE TIBETAN REFUGEES SPEAK - "In Litang after the struggle started, only women and children of thirteen years and below were left. Chinese troops come to the houses to search for the men. The house dogs start barking and the children rush out. The Chinese shoot down the dogs and in the process some of the children also get killed. In the beginning of the uprising the women used to go and keep food in certain places. The Chinese come to know of it and shoot the women when they come to deposit the food in the agreed marked places. Later they destroyed the crops to prevent help from getting across to the partisans"... Statement of two monks Thotub and Chamba of Tao From Kham Both of them stated that lands taken from monasteries and landlords were first distributed to Tibetans. In a year they were all deprived of the land, and Chinese were settled on the land. Thotub added: "I have a recollection of an incident connected with the Red Army's march to Yenan. I was 17 years old then. Chu Teh came to our country via Gyal Rong. They were having a big congregation of monks in the monastery of Tao Ngyam-tso Compo. The monastery alone houses 1900 monks. The fleeing Communists under Chu Teh attacke4 the monastery, killing 30 monks. The monastery was destroyed and they ran off taking the wealth and the animals. On the march they robbed us of our grains and other possessions. Because of this raid the country was faminestrikan, and thousands died for want of food, "To rectify these wrongs in 1950 when they invaded our country they loudly professed good intentions and talked of equality and justice. This went on for three years, after which the Chinese started changing their ways. In 1956 they started terrorising us. They greatly harassed the monks... 56 ATE TIBETAN REFUGEES SPEAK ? Statement of Thenio of Theev Gompa "I am not a big person. I am a servant of a trader. Prior to the coming of the Chinese I was at Tachien Lu (Eastern Tibet)... "After the coming of the Chinese I stayed with my colleagues for over a year. In the beginning they used to talk of justice and of bringing in reforms. They talked that they would not interfere with our lives. There will be no restrictions on trade. We will enjoy all our personal liberties. "In that first year they treated us well by offering good prices for the goods we had to sell. So we brought in large consignments of serge, cotton, cloth and utensils. "As soon as goods in plenty got stocked the Chinese employed other tactics. Instead of paying the due price they paid less; in most cases only half of the value in goods. We began to suffer heavy losses. When the Chinese raised the prices in the beginning, the transport charges also got higher. This process went on to such an extent that the prices offered by the Chinese did not cover even the cost price of the articles. People got exasperated. They did not want to sell. I am an eye-witness of many cases of cigarettes bought by petty traders being thrown into the water rather than be sold at a price which did not even cover transport. "In this area there are lots of lamasseries and monasteries. Most of these religious institutions possess land and have also trade interests. The Chinese after destroying the trade of the country resorted to trouble the monasteries. They told everyone that keeping up monks, abbots and even incarnate lamas is all useless and only a waste of money. They asked the monks to came to Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 57 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 TRE TIBETAN REFUGEES SPEAK ? the fields and work for their living. They said that monki were only para- sites. All our people were shocked. According to our religion monks cannot engage in wordly affairs. "The Communists used force to make the monks come out and labor on the land. People wept when they saw the monks being treated like this. The Communists got jealous of the influence of the monks and started killing them. Amongst those killed was the much respected Lochy Gompo Turing who was killed in a mysterious way in prison. Under the pretext of re-building and repairing monasteries they have taxed many of the monasteries...As a result, monasteries got deserted. The inmates could not stay because they had nothing to eat. Under these circumstances people became convinced that the Chinese were out to destroy their religion. Getting desperate the people began fighting the Communists." 58 1 SOVIET OFFICIAL TELLS WHY HE SOUGHT POLITICAL ASYLUM (Excerpts from a statement by Alexander Urevitch Kaznacheev) 401.1,4.A, (On June 24$ 1959, Mt. Raznacheev, 27, who had been information officer of the Soviet Embassy in Rangoon, Burma, asked the American Embassy there for. political asylum. He explains his action in this per- sonal statement.) ? My name is Alexander Raxnacheev, but my Burmese friends usually call me Alex or Mr. Alex. I was born in Moscow April 25, 1932. my family, according to Russian standards, -is well-to-do. My father is an engineer and a highly- educated an. My mother. also received a good education. After high school I entered the Moscow Oriental Institute's Chinese Department. In 1954 I was transferred to Moscow's International Relations Institute, attached to the Foreign Office. In the different departments of that institute I studied English, Chinese, and some Burmese. I finished that Institute in 1956. In March 1957, I went to Burma, to continue my studies of Burma and the Burmese language. I returned to Moscow in September 1957. Then it was proposed that I join the Foreign Service, and I agreed. In December 1957 I returned to Burma, where I was appointed to the post of infotmation officer at the Soviet Embassy. In February 1959 I was promoted to the post of secretary, and then in May I was told by officials of the Soviet Embassy that I was going to be promoted to the rank of attache. All pre- parations were made to send me back to Moscow on leave in June 1959 in order to get an official appointment to that post. My ticket home was dated June 26. .s;hts 59 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 .1,-, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 1 SOVIET OFFICIAL TELLS"WHY.HE SOUGHTTOLITICAL ASYLUM IAPOWSoviet Embassy in Rangoon my main task was translation and interpretation. in high school I began to feel disbeiierand distrust with the Soviet regime, the Communist Party and the leaders of the Party. period of the bloody Stalin regime. I should tell something about students in the Soviet Union. USSR, students represent the most progressive part of the population. Soviet Government and the Communist Party spare no efforts to see that That was the In the The they get a good education. Their aim is to convert them into trusted Communists, trusted followers, and trusted servants of the regime. But this policy turns. out to be a boomerang. Students think, and good education can penetrate through propaganda and slander to real facts and ? 4-, real life._ Students can analyze figures, and often they can see more than sVviain people workers and peasants. ,./ Quite naturally the. first and the strongest dissatisfaction with the government and the regimeltakes place among students. I can give a very strong example of this discontent on the part of students. During the Hungarian freedom revolution 5i October 195d7 there WAS something like a shock throughout Soviet society. All people -- and especially students took hope that the events An Hungary might lessen the grip of terror for them. There were many disturbances among students during the Hungarian Vvolution. In Moscow University and the Government High Technical School -(said to be a stronghold of communism), there were strikes and meetings of students. 60 at- 'sent. SOVIET OFFICIAL TILLS WHY HE SOUGHT POLITICAL ASYLUM The students adopted resolutions and composed demands to the govern- In most countries meetings of students -- with demands to governments end authorities -- is a very normal thing, but in the Soviet Union it was un- precedented. Government and intelligence organs also found out at that time that some groups of students were forming underground groups. The institute of International Relations, in which I studied, is also supposed to be a stronghold of Communism. More than half of the students of this institute are enlisted from officers of the intelligence service; another half is made up of youth -- children if high-ranking Soviet officials, such as ????? the son of Gromyko and the daughter of Molotov Lyho was than still in Party Sven at this Institute during the Hungarian events the atmosphere was very tense. All th, students felt uneasy. Studies were interrupted while students gathered in groups and discussed what was happening. Even the children of high officials and the former intelligence service officers showed a little more than just interest in these affairs.,.. During my student days I studied hard. I tried to penetrate through the slander and distorted facts which were given us by our lecturers, tried to analyze and compile real facts about the free world, about Russia, about the life of my own people. At that time I had a hope that some day I would be able to use all this knowledge for the benefit of my people. I believe that today in the Soviet Union there are many whore analyzing and comparing facts about life in free world countries and in their 61 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ? *r Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 SOVIET OFFICIAL TELLS WHY BE SOUGHT POLITICAL ASYLUM awn country. Many of them are afraid. Many of them are suppressed. Many of them cannot express --maybe even to themselves -- their real desire for democracy, for freedom. In my search for truth I found that millions of people were in concentration camps.... I found misery, poverty and dangerously-low living standards for millions of Soviet people, on the one side, and dangerous wealth and luxury for the small elite group of Communist Party leaders on the other side. I found complete liquidation of any rights, any democratic freedom for millions on one side, and unlimited power, unlimited rights that can be compared only with that of the Czar, on the other. In my search I found that all achievements -- economic, industrial, scientific and educational -- obtained by the Soviet Union were obtained through dangerous sacrifices on the part of millions. All large and developing industry was practically built on the bones and blood of millions. It is a very widespread saying in the Soviet Union that all achievements of the USSR were obtained not because of communism but in spite of it The whole social atmosphere in the Soviet Union is tense to the ut- most extent. There is very widespread fear of other persons, suspicion of others, disbelief of the aims of others. ;ere is very widespread careerism, bureaucratism, bribery and spying on others. This atmosphere of disbelief and hatred and terror, penetrates even to families. It is quite the usual thing that children are afraid to tell the whole truth to their parents. Husbands are afraid to share thoughts or criticisms with their wives. 62 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ?? I ?11.???????????0????.???????? SOVIET OFFICIAL TELLS WHY HE SOUGHT POLITICAL ASYLUM For all these reasons my inner hatred of Communist tyranny increased, although I was quite successful in my attempts to conceal my real beliefs. When I came to Burma I found a free people -- people who are not afraid of their government; people who have no mutual suspicion, mutual fear and mutual spying. I found that my friends in Burma have no desire to see a Communist government installed in Burma; they do not want to see their country become a puppet of a larger Communist power. Because I can speak Burmese it was easier for me to understand this country; it was easier for me to find how free and kind the Burmese people are. I made very many friends -- true and sincere friends -- who inspired me to 1?01 4 "ire in goodness and in humanity. While working at the Soviet Embassy, however, like all other members of the staff, I was instructed and ordered to spy on my Burmese friends, to develop my contacts with the people, to report any conversation and get any information I could obtain from them. I hated this kind of work; I tried my best to avoid fulfilling the instruction I got. A few times I was criticized by my chiefs for supplying too little information -- too little in view of my knowledge of the Burmese language and having many Burmese friends to give me "opportunities" in this work. I am very grateful to my Burmese friends. They helped me to maintain my self-respect, my pride; they helped me to remember that I am still a man. Because of them I succeeded in keeping my faith and belief in the goodness of humanity and civilization. 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 63 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 SOVIET OFFICIAL TELLS WHY HE SOUGHT POLITICAL ASYLUM All evils of the Soviet system, the tyranny of the Communist regime, that are to some extent hidden and not so clearly seen in the USSR, became clear to me in the tense atmosphere in the Soviet Embassy. Everything I saw in Burma, particularly my life at the Soviet Embassy, strengthened my hatred of communism, of the Communist regime, of International communism and its aims. All this convinced me that I must not only passively look on from outside at all this but that I must take an active part in the struggle against this greatest menace to goodness, humanity and civilization..,. I have decided on my own free will to leave my former life and responsibilities. I have left my position in the Soviet Embassy in Rangoon because I want to struggle against the cruel oppressive 4ranny of communism. I believe that communism is .evil. because it deprives individual man of his pride and self-respect. Communism reduces man to a sub-human level where he a slave of the Party and its ruling masters. I hate the regime that is presently ruling the Soviet Union, The Soviet government uses terror, subversion and police state methods to achieve its aims. I desire a life of freedom, Which is not possible for a citizen of the U.S.S.R. The above statement has been made by me in my own hand, of my own free will, in the solemn hope that it will contribute to the inevitable success of the free world's struggle against international communism. 64 57.2p. 1112.1100.16.11116 THE GREATEST FLIGHT FROM COMMUNISM: 3,500,000 LEAVE EAST GERMANY By George Bailey '-j."-;.4.'"????? (14r. Bailey is a well-known writer on Central and East European developments. He lived for several years in Berlin after World War II and knows that city intimately. His home now is in Vienna.) Of all the countries of the Sino-Soviet bloc which have lost refugees since the end of World War II -- a total of 12,000,000 in thirteen years -- the Soviet Zone of Germany has lost the most. In that time, more than 3,500,000 East Germans have fled to the free German Federal Republic -- a refugee total amounting to more than 20 percent of the present East German population. The 1958 issue of the Statisticalarook published in the Soviet Zone, admits that the population there has decreased by 1,076,465 since the so-called German Democratic Republic was founded in 1949, despite the influx into the Zone from the Soviet controlled areas farther East. Communist East Germany today is the only area in continental Europe with a declining popu- lation, This depletion has already drastically affected the basic structure of the East German population. In a speech in July 1958, East German Premier Otto Grotewohl was unusually frank on this score: "It is a fact", he said, "that the German Democratic Republic ... today numbers only 17,300,000 persons." (According to figures published by the Federal Ministry for All-German Affairs, the population of the East Zone is now under seventeen million,) ner.lassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81 -01043R004100140007-0 65 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE GREATEST FLIGHT FROM COMMUNISM: 3,500,000 LEAVE EAST GERMANY Grotewohl added that this loss had seriously affected the birth rate, which continues to decrease. "In 1951 we had 16.9 births for every thousand inhabitants", he said. "In 3.952 it was 16.7, a year later 16.4, and in 1957 only 15.6". East Germany now has the lowest birth rate in Europe. Worse, the surplus of births over deaths, according to the Statistical Year Book of the GDR, dwindled from 5.5 in 1951 to 2.8 in 1957. Today there is no surplus at all, the number of births being at least matched by the number of deaths. As a result of this trend, the proportion of old people in East Germany has risen sharply. "At present", Grotewohl went on, "two men must work in order to support a third who is retired". He confessed that "the continuing flight from the Republic is problem No. 1, a problem to which we have in every case takon a frivolous and very formal attitude. This cannot go on". The flight of millions of East Germans from the Soviet Zone has be- devilled and baffled Communist authorities ever since the Soviet occupation be- gan. Though the number of refugees varies from year to year (in 1953, the year of the East German revolt, the flaw reached an all time high of over 330,000) annual totals are always staggeringly large. They have never fallen under 165,0004. The desperate attempts of the S.E.D. or Socialist Unity (1,e. Commun. 1st) Party of East Germany to halt this movement have not only failed but back- fired. The mass exodus of East Germans to West Germany in the summer of 1958 was the greatest since 1953. On one weekend in August, some five thousand ref. ugees crossed from East to West Berlin and asked for asylum. Even more alarming than the greatly increased numbers, from the stand- point of the Soviet Zone regime, was the Changed quality of the refugees. These 66 2 THE GREATEST FLIGHT FRCM COMMUNISM: 3,500,000 LEAVE EAST GERMANY were the doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers and scientists -- the cream of East Germany's professional, academic and technical intelligentsia, who have long enjoyed high earnings and special treatment under the cormtmists. In the last four years, 40,000 professional men and women from the East have sought asylum in West Berlin. Among them were 2,700 doctors, 1,100 engineers, 12,000 teachers, and 400 university professors. Professor Josef Haemel, the reotor of the famous University of Jena, defected to West Berlin in August 1958 ten days before the much-publicized queAricentennial jubilee of that institution. The most immediately critical loss took place among the doctors. Al. most a thousand (927) fled Westward during 1958. This is more than six percent of the total number of doctors in East Germany. One statistic tells the story: ingest Germany there is one doctor for every 700 persons. Because of the flight of the doctors, there is now only one for every 1,700 in East Germany. Whole counties in East Germany are now without a single physiciano In some hospitals in the Soviet Zone, young assistantdoctors, who have just passed 'their medical examinations, work as doctors in charge of entire wards or departments. In early 1958, to partially cover the loss, the East German authorities began importing doctors from Communist Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria,but without their families, to prevent their defection also Entire faculties of large universities in East Germany have been closed down because of the flight of qualified personnel. The same thing has happened and continues to happen in factories. Last year almost all the key managerial and technical personnel of the Potsdam Electrical Works fled to West Berlin -- virtrisaly in a body. The industrial labor force -- and the cadre system, which is the life blood of every Communist regime -- has been riddled. 4 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 67 4 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE GREATEST FLIGHT FROM CCMMUNISM: 3,5000000 LEAVE EAST GERMANY More than fifty percent of all East German refugees throughout the last fourteen years were under twenty-five years of age. An. estimated 24,000 second- ary-school graduates and young university students have fled since 1954. In some cases, whole classes of students with their teachers have crossed the line. Seventy-five percent of the East German refugees have been of working age -- a blow Lo a state whose industry is already lagging because of labor shortages. It was Communist Party Chief- Walter Ulbrichtgs announcement of the "Twelve-Hundred Days Plan", under which East Germany was to equal and better West Germany's living standard in some three years (a plan accompanied by extreme Party pressure on all intellectuals), that precipitated the mass exodus of the very people he needed most. Six months after the plan was announced, tie East Zona government admitted a shortage of more than twenty thousand skilled laborers. Today, almost a year after the announcement, the shortage verges on forty thousand. Despite the severity of the many strictures imposed by the East German government on the population, "political pressure" ranks only third among the reasons given by the refugees for their flight. The most fivquent reason given is the "unsatisfactory or insufficient education of children". Specifically this refers to the increased exclusion fram higher schooling of the children of intellectuals in favor of "workers' and peasants' offspring". The second reason is the "lack of opportunity to travel abroad" 2--, 'tamed" in most cases meaning West Germany. Thus, ironically, a measure introduced to re- strict the opportunity for flight becomes a reason for flight. The German Federal Republic has never encouraged the refugee flight. The Deputy Mayor of West Berlin, Franz Amrehn, said recently, "West Berlin has 68 ? THE GREATEST FLIGHT FROM COMMUNISM: 3,500,000 LEAVE EAST GERMANY never desired that the East Germans leave their homes. We have always asked them to try to hold out. But disapproving of the Communist regime, they were not able to live under it or hold out. And so they fled." In the last few years the East German authorities have introduced several measures -- some of them administrative, others of a physical security nature -- which have partially diminished the main flow of refugees. The most recent of these was the severe limitation of travel permits from East to West Germany. Only 57,500 East Germans were allowed to travel to the Federal Republic in 1958, as against 227,000 in 1957. During 1959 the number promises to total less than,50,000. An earlier East German administrative measure was a December 1957 decree that it is a criminal offense, punishable as treason, to flee the Soviet Zone. Those who attempt to flee and are intercepted, or friends and relatives who help in any way -- even by silence -- face up to three years' imprisonment at hard labor. In some instances, death sentences for what the regime calls Mepublikflucht" (flight from the republic) have been imposed. Tho most telling physical security measure was introduced ten years ago and has been steadily increased ever since. This was the installation of the "Iron Curtain" -- the sealing off of East Germany from West Germany along the zonal boundary by means of barbed wire -- some of it electrified -- a plowed strip 30 feet wide, machine-gun and searchlight towers and a "restricted zone" five kilometers deep. In addition, regime publications announcoa in ally 1959, each of the 40,000 East German border police who patrol the "Iron Curtain" will in the future be accompanied by a member of the so-called "fighting groups"-- the armed militia of the factories and state-owned plants in the Soviet Zone -- to double the barriers against escape. 69 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release THE GREATEST FLIGHT FROM COMONISM: 3,500,000 LEAVE EAST maimANy As a result of these measures, the percentage of refugees from East to West Germany Passing through Berlin has steadily increased. Through 1957 it was 40 percent. In early 1958, when inter-zonal travel was first restricted by East Germany, the percentage jumped to sixty. By the middle of 1958 it was eighty. Berlin has thus become virtually the last escape hatch to the West. The East German authorities cannot prevent travel to East Berlin from the East Zone because the Soviet sector of the city serves as the capital of the so-called German Democratic Republic. They have not -- as yet -- been able to seal off East Berlin f.rom West Berlin for more than a few days at a time, and tiler illegally. The access to any place within the limits of Greater Berlin is guar- anteed by the Four Power Statute of 1945. To seal off East Berlin permanently would revise a change of status --which is precisely what the Soviet-inspired Eerlin crisis is designed to do. The main and immediate purpose of staging the crisis, many observers believe, was to stop the flow of refugees from East to Wee Germany by having the sector boundary which divides the city recognized as a State boundary. Having purposely or inadvertently narrowed down the means of mass exodus to Berlin, it is now a question of eliminating Berlin as the last point of exit. Meanwhile, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, the refugees from communism pour through the great hole in the Iron Curtain that West Berlin represents. The reunification of Germany, so far as the German people is concerned, is in fact taking place .... in West Germany. 70 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ' 50-Yr 20 A A .? zIagiptra,wcteVIgent 4414k ?????? TW*1.7.Fal The flight of millions of East Germans from the Soviet Zone has baffled Communist regime officials since the Russian occupation began. More than 3,500,000 refugees from East Germany have escaped to the German Federal Republic since the end of World War II. Here, before the Communists increased border controls, a West German policeman helps two women from the Soviet Zone cross the "Iron Curtain" at Helmstedt. Much of the barbed wire is now elec- trified; in addition, at many points there are concrete barriers and watch tOWerii. ,-aftn-anmmh;sitiminp.SrAMIIINIVArllMlgf-VMastAMimmBpdawiazpr?. ...._ -..e.gmilmmormirms:7?,.........7 . .......,?a.m.s.i....m..m...miwtimmmn.... Ammea.......,...., _. .426, . . .... . .. . . . .,... . . . ? . : ..._., 2.... . ... .. . ...? .. 7,.. ... -. 11 _ 7, ;si''.77.'tr.:?._ ' i I 1 ? 1 1 "" ?. 11 1, Ail? ,pj, 1.1 .4 , i ? ? 40).. ??71/1..' , :41k. .. : e -. I .44 ...,4,.: :4 ? ? ? . .. . , . ? 14 , fr yi---?--4- ...L. t?i; .0..9i .' . e 12 ' 0;1 ;746. f2 41711.0):::.;.'44 '147. 'li Tr 4:'' 7a72...ir'Fir . 1 1iq. 40 r-- i 11% 46.1 Vii f7 - d"lew ...... ? i . ,,,,, ? "N. 0 ''.. ? ; 8 V- 4 ....% We.1 -4007,r q, y= )114L7740;iaZ7-i'7. ? This many refugees -- 3,000 -- left East Germany in a single day in 1953, the year of the East German uprising, which was suppressed by Soviet tanks. Six years later, in 1959, an estimated 6,000 a week were still fleeing communism. These escapees found temporary shelter in a factory building in West Berlin while they waited to be air-lifted to a new life in free West Germany. 14/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 EAST GERMAN REFUGEES FROM PROFESSIONAL CLASSES LAWYERS DOCTORS PHARMACISTS UNIVERSITY TEACHERS OTHER TEACHERS ENGINEERS & TECHNICIANS STUDENTS TOTAL 1954 234 270 109 28 2,1)45 1,610 879 5,175 1955 157 344 108 56 2,720 2,475 1, 835 7,695 1956 156 . 467 125 43 2,453 2,672 1,431 7,347 1957 71 440 99 58 2.293 2, 196 1, 894 7,051 1958 75 1,242 184 208 3,089 2,345 2,522 9,665 TOTAL 693 2,733 625 393 12,600 11,298 8,561 36,933 iNCREASE FOR 1958 OVER 1957 4 802 85 150 796 149 628 2, 614 PERCENT OF INCREASE 6 180 86 259 35 7 33 37 THE ROAD TO BERLIN By Norman Cousins From The Saturd.lv Review Reprinted by permission A man, his wife, and their teem-age son came into the long rectan- gular room. They were sturdily and warmly dressed. The man was well-built; his skin had the glow of excellent health* But there was a suggestion of weariness in the way he held his head. His wife showed her fatigue more clearly. She stared sadly out of swollen dark eyes. The boy was thin and stooped; his face was drawn and expressionless. The man spoke in a low voice as he told his story. He was in his late forties. He had just come from Saxony, in East Germany. He said he was an electrical engineer and contractor. He showed me photographs of his home and his place of business with its modern equipment. Then he spoke about life in East Germany. He had done rather well in business,. and he had no complaints. But some months ago he began to run into diffi- culties. He was a member of Jehovah's Witnesses. While the authorities did not interfere directly with his religious practices or activities, there were various annoyances that increased in frequency and severity with each passing month. The tax examiners would spend more and more ?.411 1. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE ROAD TO BERLIN time combing through his books and asking him qUestions. The people who worked for him began to feel petty pressures. Then, one night, a pan came to the house, flashed an official's card of one kind or another, and told the engineer he was wanted for questioning at once. The engineer did not return home until the following evening. All night and day he had been questioned. While he was gone the house had been searched. It was then that the engineer reached his decision to give up his home, his business, everything he owned, and attempt to begin a new life in West Germany. The first part of the break came when the engineer's 23-year-old daughter was chosen as a delegate to the World Congress of Jehovah's Wit- nesses, meeting in Yankee Stadium in New York. She stayed in the United States for some weeks. On the way back, according to plan, she went to live in West Germany. The big moment arrived several hours before I met the engineer. He and his family got into their car and drove to the outskirts of East Berlin. Then they abandoned their automobile, walked to the nearest sub- way station, and took the train to West Berlin. (There is complete free- dom of Movement between East and West Berlin on the trams and subways.) When they emerged, they walked to the central relocation center for peo- ple who were fleeing from East Berlin or East Germany. All they had taken with them was a small suitcase of clothing and a briefcase containing busi- ness and family papers. 711 THE ROAD TO BERLIN At the relocation center they were directed to the long rec- tangular room where they would be registered and where officials would obtain from them information essential to any effort to resettle them in other parts of West Germany. It was here that I met them. In the front of the room was the desk of the camp supervisor who explained the pur- pose of the forms the engineer was asked to fill out. The supervisor explained that the family would stay at the relocation center for four or five days. By that time a place would be found for them near Frankfurt, where their daughter was staying and where they had friends. A small sum of money would be provided to heli him get started. After that, he would be on his awn. There was a de- ? mand for engineers of all sorts and he should be able to find a job. No one could guarantee, of course, that he could establish a business as large or as flourishing as the one he had just left; but he ought to hold his own. He would stay at the relocation center for several days while this was being arranged. Then, ie and his family would be flown to a city in West Germany where officials were prepared to offer him every assist- ance. (Citizens of East Germany or East Berlin proper who cross over to West Berlin are very seldom permitted to settle in West Berlin. The city is already overpopulated, with consequent problems of housing and employ- ment. many, Hence they are flown from Berlin, which is an island in East (3er- to a redistribution center like Frankfurt in-West Germany.) The supervisor asked the engineer to-return to the same room the following morning when he would meet representatives of the occupying powers of Berlin, the United States, Great Britain and France. He would Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 75 t,) Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 TEE ROAD TO BERLIN be questioned again about his reasons for leaving and about the conditions of the area from Which he came. The engineer and his family then were invited to the dining rosin of the relocation center for the noonday meal. The dining roan was situated not more than 100 feet from the registration unit. Several hundred people were queued up irregularly in front of the dining room. The room was large and bright. It was fairly modern in design, with ceiling to floor windows on one side. It looked more like a college cafeteria than a refugee food center. As each person passed by the serving section, he was handed a deep aluminum dish containing generous portions of boiled beef, cabbage and potatoes. This was the main meal. At night the serving would consist of a large bowl of soup and bread. The dining room had accommodations for 500 people. This meant that each chair would be put to use several times for each meal, for an average of 3,000 people were cared for each day at the center. The usual time for each person to be served and fed ran 15 minutes. Most of the people in the dining room were middle-aged, though the cries of youngsters could be heard now and then over the scraping of chairs and the hubbub of mealtime talk. A young man of about 25 came over to where we were standing and asked if he could be of help. After a mo- ment or two we were chatting freely. He said this was his third day at the relocation center. He was unmarried. He was an animal trainer in a traveling circus in East Germany. It had been made clear to him that if he expected to move ahead in his job he ought to become interested in THE ROAD TO BERLIN politieal matters in a way that might advance the welfare of the German Democratic People's Government. In short, join the party. When he had failed to do so he lost his job. It was then that he decided to cross over to West Berlin. Standing next to the animal trainer was a poorly dressed, tall, ruddy-faced woman of about 55. She listened to the young man's story, nodding when he spoke about having been advised to become more interested in political matters. In her own case, she said, there had been some slight pressure but no penalties when she failed to accede. Her trouble was that she had tried to smuggle medicines from West Berlin for a friend who worked alongside her in the factory. She was apprehended, but man- aged to get away before the trial. When I asked where she would go and what she intended to do, she shook her head and said she didn't know. In going over the records with the supervisor of the relocation center, I learned that there had been a marked shift in the type Of emigre since the first wave in 1945. From 1945 through 1953, most of the people who came across the line were hardship cases. This was especially true in 1948 and 1953 when East Germany experienced a severe food shortage. Some of the people who came to West Berlin to receive free food packages in 1953 never went home. From 1954 to 1956 there seemed to be an influx of young people -- students and recent graduates in search of education without indoctrination. Bit in the last year or two middle-aged people, many of them well educated and in the professions, seemed to predominate. The reasons they now give have less to do with hardship than with intellectual or religious convic- tion, as in the case of the engineer. 77 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE ROAD TO BERLIN The recent defections, it appears, may be more painful to the East .German Government than earlier ones. Just in the three-month period from September through November of 1958, for example, East Germany has lost 360 physicians; 728 engineers and technicians; 1217 professors and teachers; 671 writers, journalists, editors; 775 students undergraduate and postgraduate. The total in all these categories for the first 11 months of 1958 was well over 9,000. Even tIlim number, of course, is only a small fraction of the grand total of all the people who resettled in West Germany during 1958. (Offi- cial figures for 1958, released at year's end by the West German Government, totalled 204,061. Since the end of World War II; move than 3,500,000 East Germans have moved to West Germany.) One of the specific effects of the population shift has been a manpower shortage in East Berlin and East Germany in general, especially in skilled jobs. In West Germany, exactly the opposite has happened. The unemployment problem, while not critical, is nevertheless a matter of in- creasing concern to West German officials. East Germany has tried to capi- talize on the situation by promising a job to anyone from the Western side who would like to migrate. Takers have been extremely few. There can be little doubt that the constant manpower drain on East Germany has been one of the main reasons behind the determination of the Soviet Union to close the West Berlin gateway. Any country, even a large one, that loses physicians at the rate of 1,200 per year, and engi- neers and scientists at the rate of 3,000 a year, is going to be forced to plug the hole. 78 A. THE ROAD TO BERLIN In withdrawing from Berlin, and in calling upon the Western occupying powers to withdraw too, the U.S.S,R, is playing upon the deep- rooted desire of the German people to get rid of the outsider. But the desire is somewhat mixed, to say the least. Almost any West Berliner you speak to may brighten perceptibly at the suggestion that all foreigners in a position of authority over him should leave the country. But he doesn't want to lose any of the benefits that come from the fact that the West, and, in particular, the United States, has a strong stake in West ,Germany. The German people are not unmindful of the fact that their as- tounding recovery from. the Second World War was speeded in a large measure by the billions of dollars supplied by the United States. Nor are they unaware or the fact that this aid has been far greater than that supplied to France, and certainly to Poland, both of which were on America's side during the war and neither of which approaches the present economic power of Germany. Moreover, there is genuine fear that if all the occupying powers withdraw from Berlin, it will only be a question of time before Berlin will become an integral part of East Germany. That Berlin today is split down the middle -- economically, . philosophically, politically, socially -- is one of the most visible And dramatic facts of the modern world. Indeed, the difierences between the two sections are so great as to suggest that they are at least a continent and a decade apart. The differences have less to do with jobs and bread than with the contrasting personality of the two sectors. Economically, both sections have improved prodigiously in the past five years. East Ber- lin no longer has the bleak and somber aspect it did only five years ago. 79 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE ROAD TO BERLIN The people are better dressed, obviously better fed, and they no longer seem to amble. The stores now ere well stOoked with food. But there is still a heaviness to the place, a feeling suggested perhaps by absence of people on the streets, especially at night, and by the lack of variety or grace in the architecture of the new housing projects, although it must be recognized that the Stalinstadt housing development is the largest of its kind in the world. It provides low-cost housing for 30,000 families, many of whom, however, were admitted not only on the basis of need, but of political orientation. West Berlin does not have the order or uniformity that is so apparent in East Berlin. In fact, much of it approaches the chaotic. But it is a sparkling chaos, full of artistic glints and human electricity. The visitor who comes to it today after having seen East Berlin first, as I did, feels as though he has been catapulted into a new age. There are people in the streets and in the shops in West Berlin; there is a swirl of life and bright lights and there is creative ferment. The city gives the impression that it is bursting with life, motion, vital thrust. When I asked several East Berliners why there should be such a large migration to West Berlin, the usual answer was that those who leave are mostly tax dodgers or people in tax trouble. It was added that there was no economic reason for them to leave; food was in good supply, prices were reasonable, rents were low, medical services were available at little, or no cost, and jobs were to be had by all. In contrast, it was argued, housing was expensive and difficult to find in West Berlin and unemploy- ment was widespread. 80 eV THE ROAD TO BERLIN There seemed to .be little ambiguity, however, in the replies to the same question when put to West Berliners. -First of all, they said, there was enough movement of people out of West Berlin to West Germany to lceep the unemployment problem from becoming too severe. Next, the lure of inexpensive housing wasn't too great in view of the fact that it was tied up with a system of political activity and rewards. Third, thegi wasn't too much enthusiasm about the kind of work that might be available. Most East Berliners have their "Soll," individual work quotas. In any event, one man told me with a smile, the incentives offered by East Germany are not quite irresistible. This article appeared in the January 3, 1959, issue of The Saturday Revi.ew, published in the United States and containing articles on general and literary subjects as well as reviews of recently published books. The writer is editor of that magazine. The article has been abridged. It may be republished as a single article or in a book in English and in trans- lation outside the United States and Canada under the following conditions: Credit must be given to the author and The Saturday Review; no further abridgment may he made; the following copyright notice must be carried: q) 1959.by Saturday Review, Inc. Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 51. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 A ten-member East German family used this ancient truck to crash through a double barrier at the border with West Germany, within range of Com- munist guns on a nearby watchtower. Friedrich Griefs, 47, accompanied by his wife and eight children, used his 100-horsepower truck as a bat- tering ram to knock down a barrier of three-foot high paving blocks and a barbed wire fence more than eight feet high. AN EAST GERMAN FARM FAMILY CRASHES THROUGH ME IRON CURTAIN By Mark Piros Friedrich Graefe, his wife, and eight children ranging in age from two to thirteen, are hav- ing their first meal in free West Germany after fleeing from. the Soviet Zone of Germany. Graefe was facing a prison term for making derogatory remarks about the Communist regime. He was on a list of persons scheduled for arbitrary resettlement somewhere deep in East Germany, and he had heard that Communist officials were planning to take away his trucking license, which'would have deprived him of his livelihood. All of these things contributed to his decision that escape from the Soviet Zone was the only solution. One of the more dramatic escapes of East Germans during 1959 was that of the ten-member Friedrich Graefe family, which used an ancient truck to crash through a double barrier at the border, within range of machine guns on a nearby watchtower. The determined Graefesp although their method of overcoming Iron Cur- tain obstancles was unusutoly striking, are in many waystypical of the more than 3,500,000 East Germans who have become refugees from the Soviet Zone since the end of World War Following the escape Mr. Graefe told a West German newsman, "You can take my word for it that I am fortunate I" The 47-year4old farmers accompanied by his wife Lisa and eight of his 13 children, used his 100-horsepower truck as a battering ram to crash through a barricade of three-foot high paving blocks and a barbed vire fence more than eight feet high -- all within range of guns manned by border guards at the nearby watchtower. According to West German police, the escape took place so quickly that the Graefe family was safely in the custody of a West German patrol before Com- munist guards realized what had happened. The Graefe family lived at Rlettenberg, two miles from the border, where the father farmed and ran a transport business. He told West German refugee officials that he left for both political and economic reasons, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 1 re altlaSiilimmosP Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 AN EAST GERMAN FARM FAMILY CRASHES THROUGH THE IRON CURTAIN although his immediate motive for escaping was fear of imprisonment. In No vember 1958 he had been arrested and charged with making derogatory remarks about the Communist state -- he had said, among other things, "In the gasg German Democratic Republic, all is collapse..." Be had also refused to take part, as ordered, in political activitien, and in addition one of his sons had fled to West Germany. Graefe said he also had heard reports that Communist officials were planning to take away his license to practice a trade, which would have deprived him of his livelihood. He faced an almost certain prison term, and was also on a list of persons scheduled for arbitrary resettlement at points deep in East Germany. All of these things, in addition to general economic hardships and harassment by the regime which made maintaining his farm and trucking business increasingly difficult, convinced him that escape from East Germany was the only solution. The exact place of his border crossing had been discreetly investigated by Graefe some weeks before the actual escape. The spot most suitable for a break-through was found near Wiedigshof, where the boundary forms an open rectangle leading to the Federal Republic, although it was heavily barricaded there. At almost the same spot a previous escape had taken place a year earlier, when another East German family broke through the fence with an armored truck. Although following that escape border police had added the heavy concrete blocks to the barbed wire "Iron Curtain," Graefe thought this section to the border still could be breached. Kt.!? - ....Li, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? '1W ? AN EAST MEAN FA( FAKELY CRASHES THROUGH THE IRON CURTAN Graefe then obtained a special permit to visit a grown daughter in Schierke, a neighboring Soviet Zone village. His family was permitted to accompany him on the visit. Even the children, Who might otherwise have let a word slip out, believed they weremerely going to see their older sister. Nor did the three older children wham Graefe left in the Soviet Zone have any Inkling of the escape until it was over. This was for their protection as well as for that of the farmer and his younger children; even knowledge of what the Communist regime calls "Republikflucht" (flight from the republic) can be punished as treason in East Germany. On Saturday, April 4, 1959, about 2 p.m., Graefe loaded his wife and eight children, aged from two to 14 years, into his 15-year-old "Hinomag" truck. The parents and two youngest children squeezed into the cab, the other six children crouching on a small rear platform. NO possessions were taken except blankets and a little food, for their story of going to visit another daughter had to seem plausible if they stopped. This precaution proved vise, for as the Graefes moved along Gudesleben highway parallel to the zonal border an officer of the regime's "People's police" stopped the truck. Since all Graefe 'a papers were in order, however, the policeman only smiled at the children and allowed the group to pass. Near Gudesleben the border is neavily fortified with massive concrete barrier blocks and a network of barbed wire some eight feet high. A, 'watchtower, manned day and night by border guards, is scarcely half a 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 AN EAST GERMAN FARM FAMILY CRASHES THROUGH THE IRON CURTAIN kilometer away, and the highway itself, because of its proximity to the border, is under constant surveillance. Despite its many hazards, Graefe had determined that this area offered his best opportunity for an escape attempt. He suddenly turned off the highway into a road leading to the small community of Wiedigshof. He looked back once more and then headed his truck for the border. The heavy truck forced its way through the barrier stones and then smashed through the network of barbed wire. Graefe later said his fear that the barbed wire would tear the front tires did not materialize, although the handbrake was damaged. Because Graefe had selected a spot only partially visible from the nearest police watchtower, the refugees gained a few precious minutes. Clouds of dust from the dr,r roads also helped camouflage the break. The last remain- ing obstacles, a number of large rocks, were hastily removed, and the truck crossed the newly-ploughed field which makes up the so-called "dead zone" as speedily as possible. The family feared to travel any farther near the boun- dary even on the West German known to shoot down escapees "But on the other, side -- for the Communist border police have been already over the line. free side," Graefe told a West German newsman, "stood a German customs official who pointed out the direction to me. He led me over soft ground away from the threatening watchtower. He signalled to me not to stop in any case, and thus I and my family got farther and farther away from the threat of the watchtower and its crew. After a kilometer-long cross- country trip, the person who helped me to freedom made a sign to me, near 86 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 42r2Ti 71..1 AN EAST GERMAN FARM FAMILY CRASHES THROUGH TRE IRON CURTAIN Wiedigshof-Malkenried, to get on the hard road, and only then could I breathe freely again." The villagers of Walkenried were amazed when the farmer, his forty- year-old wife and eight children suddenly appeared. The group proceeded to Bad Sachsa, where the family has relatives who will_help them resettle. Frustrated Communist officials in Klettenberg immediately confis- cated the Graefe farm and cattle, and took away identity cards from the two older children who had chosen to remain in the Soviet Zone. Within minutes of the Graefe escape, East German border police swarmed over the breached Iron Curtain. Reinhold Koenig, a West German cus- toms official stationed at the border, said: "It was axe a beehive. Within an hour they had closed the gap in the double fence again." 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 87 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 irrmilii0Moinemmomf, -w?q:i7Tarilam.11-Treman-m7;acr THE 200,000 HUNGARIANS WHO MADE HISTORY 71: Nearly 200,000 Hungarians fled to Austria and Yugoslavia in late 1956 and early 1957, following Soviet suppression of the freedom revolt in Hungary. The first few days, while the refugees fought their way through snow and mud, Hungarian border guards turned their eyes away, and only a few Soviet armored vehicles and tanks attempted to interfere. Within a few days crossing the frontier became difficult and dangerous, but still the stream went on without interruption. When regular patrolling of the border began on the Hungarian side, crossings were made at night in freezing weather, often in dramatic circumstances. Here volunteer workers on the Austrian side, in sight of a watchtower in Communist Hungary, wait to help new arrivals in January 1957. Thousands of men, women and children risked death or imprisonment in the spontaneous migration which made refugees of approximately one out of every forty-five Hungarians during late 1956 and early 1957. Photographed on arrival at a farm- house on the Austrian side of the border, in January 1957, is this little girl who was separated from her mother in the terrifying escape from communism. By Mark Piros ? r.t ? 4 ? 2 ? ?:?;. For sheer drama, few historical episodes can rival the events of October and November, 19560 when millions of Hungarians revolted against Soviet domination only to see their hopes for self-rule end in mass bloodshed and the imposition of new Communist oppressions. Today, almost three years later, it is equally apparent that of the millions of individuals who have become refugees from communism since World War II, no single group has made a greater impact on world opinion than the nearly 200,000 Hungarians who crossed their country's borders in late 1956 and early 1957. Thousands of men, women and children risked death or imprisonment in that spontaneous migration which made refugees of approximately one out of every 45 Hungarians. The Hungarian uprising, which began on October 23, 1956 as an unarmed student demonstration, quickly flamed into an open, nation-wide revolt against Soviet and Communist control. For a week Hungary was free. But in the early morning hours of NOvem- bar 4, while the Hungarians withdrawal of the Red Army, and armored cars, squadrons were still negotiating with Russian officials for Soviet forces attacked Hungary with 4,600 tanks of light bombers, and 200,000 soldiers. That day the first big stream of refugees began fleeing westward toward free Austria. Escapees from towns and villages near the border -- most of them farmers and factory workers with their families, students and appren- tices -- arrived in Austria that first day. 89 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 [ THE 200,000 HUNGARIANS WHO MADE HISTORY' j.,????????Milt, At first the Hungarian refugees fled in buses, lorries, tractors and farm wagons piled high with luggage, or on foot, carrying what they could on their backs. Others used oxcarts, handcarts, bicycles and wheelbarrow. Many walked the entire distance from Budapest to the border -- some 150 miles. Their faces showing sorrow and resignation, they trudged silently forward, in what seemed to be an unending stream. At first, while the refugees fought their way through snow and mud, Hungarian border guards turned their eyes away, and only a few Soviet armored vehicles and tanks attempted to interfere. Behind the first waves of refugees, full train loads arrived at border stations carrying would-bc escapees. Railway- men, local officials, policemen and farmers all assisted the exodus, and often joined it. Ten thousand Hungarians crossed into Austria within the first thirty- six hours. Within a few days, the crossing of the frontier became difficult and dangerous, but still the stream went on without interruption. When regular patrolling of the border began on the Hungarian side, the crossings were made at night in freezing weather, often in dramatic circumstances. After Soviet bombs destroyed the frontier bridges, exhausted refugees crossed the Einser Canal, which forms part of the border, by boat or made improvised bridges of logs. Some swam across the deeper stretches and floundered the rest of the way through deep mud. The peak month was November, when as many as 5,000 persons crossed the border each night. Writing of "The Bridge at Andau," the crossing point for thousands of Hungarians, James A. Michener said, "The dlimax at Andau came on 90 neclassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? .3T THE 200,000 HUNGARIANS WHO MADE HISTORY Wednesday, November 21, when the maximum number of refugees came into Austria across the Einser Canal. Thousands of Hungarians sought refuge*...Then, as dusk fell, there was an ominous halt to the procession...Suddenly there was a dull, distant garrummph! A refugee who had been waiting for a chance to escape came rushing down the canal bank shouting, 'They dynamited the bridge!', "Night now enveloped us, and we thought of the thousands of refugees who were huddling in chilled groups throughout the Hungarian swamps. They were only a few feet from freedom, seeking desperately some way to cross that final barrier of the canal and the steep banks they must negotiate before reaching Austria...Toward midnight a brave team of three Austrian college students lugged logs into Hungary and repaired the dynamited bridge -- not well, but enough for a precarious foothold, and by this means they saved more than 2,000 people that night alone." By December of 1956 the Soviet tanks and Communist guards stationed at the border began to pinch off the flood: the first week in December, an average of 2,532 refugees fled eadhav the second week, 1,724 a day; the third week 1,185; the fourth week 866. For the last three days, an average of 714 escaped each 24 hours. Sometimes the Russians shot down the would-be escapees; at other times, in unaccountable caprice, they let them go. The ragged, desperate stream of Hungarian refugees continued to pour toward the border, despite emergency decrees enacted by the Soviet-imposed regime in Budapest defining expatriation as & crime. Persons engaged in organizing clandestine emigration were subject to prison sentences ranging from six months to five years. Persons who knew about but failed to denounce a clandestine frontier-crossing that had been planned or put into effecticould be imprisoned for as long as two years. 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 .1.1111111.????? ' THE 200,000 HUNGARIANS WHO MADE HISTORY The large majority of escapees were young people -- 70 percent of all refugees from Hungary were under 30. They were students, technicians, teachers, artists, craftsmen and professional people, skilled workers and miners. There were many family units, including large numbers of children. One close observer said: "There is perhaps no social stratum which was not represented among them. This was neither an exodus of the poor norbof the persecuted upper class; the range of professions and of classes was just as large as that of Hungarian society itself." Most refugees said they left Hungary because their lives were in danger they feared liquidation or deportation. But there were other reasons. Many left because they,had lost their homes or families during the freedom revolt, because they could not accept the idea of living under a cause after almost fifteen years there was a way There was a feeling of urgency in the very air. Communist regime again, or be- out and one simply had to go. The neighbor left, the office staff left, the grocer and the corner policeman and the doctor left. There were almost as many dramatic escape stories as there were refugees The writer George Paloczi-Horvath, who now lives in London, wrote of his own experience: "In the last days of November the frontier was already crammed with Russian tanks and AVO /secret policg monsters. The problem was how to escape with my wife and year-old son. I could not risk challenge by Russian or AVO guards on the route. We had to choose a swampy region of the frontier where even the Russians do not like to wade about. We made a fur sack for the baby. A doctor gave us medicine to make him sleep during the long frontier passage. We were joined by my friend and former prison-companion Paul Ignotus -- another writer -- and his wife. 92 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? Fq? If? ?,5 14. ?,T ? THE 200,000 HUNGARIANS WHO MADE HISTORY "It was a stormy night when a group of thirty-three of us entered the swampy frontier region. We waded knee-deep in mud and water. The Russians kept sending up flares. Machine guns rattled in .the distance. Each step was an enor- mous physical effort. With my son on my shoulder, and my wife at my side, we struggled on for hours. At one point, all our strength was gone and we lay down on a drier piece of land, where the mud was only ankle deep. There I lay, hold- ing my little son in my arms and looking up at the stormy sky in despair. After an hour or so, we gathered enough strength to start wading again. "By now we were alone in no man's land. Then we saw swiftly-moving shadows: another group of escapees. They helped us on. "We struggled with the swamp for another two hours. Then, at last, an Austrian flag -- and a haystack! We collapsed." All the refugees arrived hungry and cold, exhausted by the harrowing experience of dodging patrols, without luggage, yet in good spirits at reaching freedom, and knowing they would find food, shelter_and help. With tireless devotion, civil servants, Red Cross workers and hundreds of Austrian. and foreign volunteers organized and along the Austro-Hungarian border, and emergency and further inland. All refugees, upon arrival, maintained first-aid points reception centers in Vienna were given warm food, blankets, clothing, and a place to sleep. Many thousands were offered hospitality by Austrian families, although most were sent to hastily-formed reception centers and camps, until they were resettled in various countries of the free world. An epilogue to the Hungarian flight was written by Francis Bondy, a well-known Swiss journalist and editor-in-chief of the French monthly Zusmg, who was in Budapest during the revolution: 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 93 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 'YR 200,000 NUNGARIANS WHO MADE HISTORY .611:12036X4WIWISX=riarns "For the majority of these refugees," he wrote, "their escape from 'limitary represents a ballot cast against the land of Soviet Kommandaturas and of. the Radar government, the most tragic but also the clearest of all possible plebtscites. More than 200,000 Hungerians had left their own country. In itself, this figure should suffice to keep the Hungarian tragedy, the despair and the hope of a whole nation, well in view of world public opinion." 9)4 ? ? . 6 WE FLED THE COMMUNIST BORDER WE WERE GUARDING By Miklos Paloczy (On a summer night in L959, 30 minutes after midnight, two Hungarian soldiers appeared, seem- ingly out of nowhere, on the deserted main street of Kleyelhof, an Austrian frontier village. A few minutes earlier they had been picking their way through ten- foot high barbed wire, and between land mines, all installed by the Hungarian Communist regime to prevent its people leaving for free Austria. Both soldiers were armed to the teeth. Each had a Russian submachine gun with 70 cartridges, and a rocket pistol. They were not regular Army soldiers, but en- listed privates of the second battalion of the Hungarian frontier guards. They wore the customary service uni- form -- green striped flat cap, high buttoned shirt, soft Russian boots. They had taken relatively few risks, despith the fortifications they had crossed, for they , had been guarding that particular stretch on the Hungarian side of the border. Their story is particularly timely, for in recent months most of the few escapees from Communist Hungary, through the tightened "Iron Curtain," have been border guards. This is the story of one of those guards, Miklos Paloczy, who tells why he and a friend left Hungary.) I began my Army service in November 1958. / was assigned to the frontier guards because, as a former tractor-driver on a collective farm, / was considered "politically developed" person. Although I was not a member of the Communist Party, I did belong to the Communist youth organization. I liked my life as a tractor-driver. I earned good-: money and had even bought a motorcycle. I had everything that I wanted.;. I had many friends. In the village lived Sari, the girl I hoped to marry one day. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 95 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WE FLED THE COMMUNIST BORDER WE WERE GUARDING After last November I lost all this, and a lot more. My prospective bride sent me a letter in December, cancelling our engagement. None of my friends wrote to me. They my parents too. I knew why they like that. They despised me because I had become an emberpecer ("head-hunter"). That is the bitter nickname which our fellow Hungarians give to those who patrol the "Iron Curtain." As prospective border guards we went through extremely tough military training for three-and-a-halflmonths. We had both practical training in the field, and political instruction. I was kept so busy that I had practically no time to think things over. But after we were actually assigned to the frontier area, I began to understand things better. Whenever we had a day off -- four times a month -- we used to go to the village inn or to the local cinema. We were told by our political officer that we must be vigilant, but at the same time very friendly with the village population. We were peasants and workers, just like the people in that village. We spoke the same language. But we met only the three leaders of the local Communist youth organization. The young people, especially the girls, shunned us. Wherever we appeared, they kept away from us. Although they did not dare scoff or laugh at us openly, we knew they wanted nothing to do with us. It was a terrible life. No friends, no girls, no relatives. I had never been so lonely. The only consolation was that a childhood friend of mine, Sandoz-, served in the same platoon. We could not talk very often because it would have created suspicion. We trusted each other, but we did not trust 96 111 11 e-ren. r WE FLED THE COMMUNIST BORDER WE WERE GUARDING anybody else. We knew that "the operatives" -- the secret police officers -- had at least one spy, if not more, in every squad. So we had to be very careful. Our political officer kept telling us that we had to keep our eyes open, that we had to be vigilant because the "enemies of socialism" (that is communism) were threatening our frontiers. He explained that anybody who wanted to leave Hungary was an enemy-or, at the best, a dupe of the enemy. We were also told that each time we caught an escapee we would get special leave. Then one day-a corpse was brought on a stretcher to our sentry-post. He had been killed by-a mine, very near the border. His legs were blown off. He was already dead when the guard shot him. He must have been about my age. It was then that morfriend and I decided to leave the frontier guard service. We feared that sooner or later we would face a terrible choice: either we would have to shoot somebody dawn, or WA would be court-emartialid for having failed to do so. Both Sandor and I are rather peaceable fellows. We rarely quarrels let alone hurt anybody. But our superiors expected us to hunt down and kill innocent people Whose only crime was that they wantedto leave Hungary. It was much easier to decide to turn our backs on that life than to Until the summer night we fled, Sandor and I had never been together on patrol -- perhaps because they knew we were good friends. Every guard was responsible for his companion. We had been taught to shoot our patrol-mate if he wanted to flee or showed cowardice. Our political officer had often related the story of a "traitor" who was killed by fellow border-guard as he was climbing over the barbed wire. do it. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 97 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Jai WE FLED THE COMMUNIST BORDER WE WERE GUARDING We were only waiting for the day when we would be together on patrol. When that dey came we took the ladder from our guard tower. We knew that we had 15 minutes before our sergeant would come by on his control-patrol. We dragged the ladder to the barbed wire. Sandor watched while I climbed up and then jumped to the other aide. In a second, he was also across safely. We still had to be cautious, because there was the hundred meters of no-man's-land to cross. Five minutes later we were in Kleyelhof. We went to the local police station. First they thought we were chasing refugees. But when we unbuckled our submachine guns and laid them down in the corner, they became all smiles. They saw that we were refugees too. We did not work out any other plan apart from the scheme of our flight. In the West we do not "expect a baked pigeon to fly into our mouth," as we Hungarians say -- we do not expect to succeed without work. We simply came because we could not stand the shame of our service any longer and because we feared that if we remainedswe would surely become murderers. 98. f7; ?-???????? 4 TZ4 "ALL BUIDARIANS WOULD ESCAPE IF THEY COULD" (The Story of Traiko Ivanov's Journey to Greece) By Mark Piros. ? In the thirteen years. since the "Bulgarian People's Republic" became a Communist-ruled Soviet satellite in 1946, some 187,000 cAizens of that country have fled to freedom in other lands. This figure included approximately 175:000 ethnic Turks who escaped to Turkey during the years when Bulgaria was undergoing its worst period of forced collectivization and religious persecution., The other Bulgarian refugees have trickled out by various means, through whatever gaps they could find in the heavily guarded "Iron Curtain" which surrounds all Soviet bloc countries. One of the most unusual of all these Bulgarian excapes was engi- neered by the Traiko Ivanov family: who made their way to Greece in 1958 by means of an ancient automobile which they had fashioned into a, primi- tive tank. Traiko Ivanov's plan for the final crossing into Greece may have been unnecessarily bizarre, but his story gives a valuable insight into the attitudes of fear and desperation so often developed by those who, live in Communist states. Traiko Damianov Ivanov had lived in Dubnitsa Bulgaria, since 1935. That village is fairly close to the Yugoslav border. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 99 _ Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 "ALL BUDZARIANS WOULD ESCAPE IF THEY COULD" In Danitza, Ivanov had met and married. MariIca Zifko, who is now 37. Their children -- all boys -- are Lae% 20; Damian, 16; and KOnstan- tine, 14. A, taxi-driver by trade, Ivanov was allowed to keep his black 1927 Chrysler touring car after the Communists took over Bulgaria. But with the fiery pride of a mountaineer, Ivanov did not like what communism was doing to Bulgaria. He could see no future there for his three sons. He explained later, after arriving in Greece: "When the 'war ended, another war began for us. A new regime was imposed on Bulgaria -- a regime which made life unbearable. I hoped that the situation might improve, and I tried to do everything I could to sup- port my family.. I bad a car, a 1927 Chrysler, and I carried passengers and dealt in the black market at the same time -- I had to -- to support my family. But I saw that nothing could save us. Every now and then I bad to sell something from our household. And. terrorism was growing.. We not only could not eat, we could not talk. "In 1957 I became completely disillusioned. The idea of escap- ing had filled my mind, during all these years. As time passed it became more insistent. Anything would be better than the Communist hell of Bul- garia. I was ready to go crazy. We had to escape. But how? It was simple to talk about. But Bulgaria is an armed camp -- it is closed every- where with barbed wire." In the spring of 1957, Ivddolv :made a decision, The family's ultimate objective was Greece, but they would first go to Yugoslovia, where they had relatives. Through the pretext of a request for permission to 100 ??? "ALL BULGARIANS WOULD ESCAPE IF tThY COULD" visit these relatives, the Ivanovs were able to obtain passports. Bulgarian officials stressed, however, that the exit permits would expire in one year and all members of the 'family must return by that time. On April 24, 1957, Ivanov loaded his wife and three sons into his 30-year-old car and drove to the Yugoslav village of Valmeftsi. There he earned money as a taxi-driver, trying meanwhile to think of ways to avoid returning to Bulgaria. During all this time, the warnings he had received from Bulgarian border officials weighed heavily on his mind. "Time was passing," he says now. "My permit to stay in Yugoslavia was nearing the expiration date and I would have to go back to Bulgaria." Ivanov explains that he was so crazy with worry that he feared even to ask for an extension. It was in this state of extreme anxiety that Ivanov conceived the idea of turning his ancient taxi into a home-made "tank." Still thinking in terms of the heavily fortified Bulgarian border, he made cement blocks and iron shields to fit in front of his car's radiator and on the sides of the motor. His son When, working with old pipes and bits of glass and mirrors, built a crude periscope which made it possible to steer the car from a position on the floor. On April 18, 1958, less than a week before the family was supposed to return to Bulgaria, everything was ready. Ivanov? who had only seen the fortified "Iron Curtain" around his own homeland, apparently did not realize that the border between Yugoslavia and Greece consisted only of a simple, wooden barrier that raised and lowered to permit traffic to proceed after the usual customs checks. It is doubtful, however, that anything could -c,A4tre 101 f Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81 -01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 "ALL BULGARIANS WOULD ESCAPE IF THEY COULD" have distracted Ivanov at this point in his determination to reach freedom in Greece. His story of the crossing of the border was told in the Salonika newspaper Makedonia: "As I saw the wooden horizontal beam coming at me, I leaned on my side with my face stuck to the pzriscope, pressing the accelerator with my right foot. Two Yugoslav soldiers were on each side of the beam, but they did nothing. A Yugoslav border official appeared in the road and signalled to me to stop, but he only whistled as I On the Greek side, just before 7:30 a.m. soldiers of the Niki frontier post, in the Florina what appeared to be a ghost car, without driver or went by." on April 19, astonished area, were amazed to see passengers, crossing into Greece from Yugoslavia. As five people crawled out of the weird vehicle, Ivanov called out a Greek word: "Prosphyges. gefugeei7." Ivanov continues his narrative: "This VAS all. Behind the broken beam, the Yugoslav officer whistled and made gestures. My wife and children had tears of joy in their eyes -- we would never have to return to Bulgaria. A Greek officer came to us. I told him that we were escaping from Bulgaria, in reality. He went to the border and said something to his Yugoslav col- league, and our journey was ended. We do not know how to thank Greece for all these things; She received us as if we were her children." Ivanov said that most of the Bulgarian people hate communism. "In our village of 250 inhabitants," he added "there were only six Communists. I know that many of our co-villagers have escaped to Greece, but I do not know where they are. .All Bulgarians would escape if they could. But they cannot..." 102 This is the interior of a 30-year- old automobile in which a Bulgarian family of five travelled to Greece. Traiko D. Ivanov and his eldest (19) son are in the front seat. The son is looking through the Improvised periscope which made it possible for the father to guide the car from a concealed position on the floor. Ivanov 's wife and two younger sons completed the family refugee group. This view shows the Ivanov family of Bulgaria in the armored 1927 Chrysler which they used in a dramatic escape to Greece. The father and his sons made concrete blocks and steel plates to protect the car's engine and sides. Following the family's escape, Traiko Ivanov said: "Bow we understand what freedom is. We had promised ourselves to reach freedom or die." Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 The most spectacular of all escapes from Albania was achieved by a tribe of nomadic shep- herds -- thirteen men, thirteen women, and thirty children, who were members of nine family groups -- the largest number of refugees ever to enter Greece at one time. The fifty-six Vlach tribesmen, shown here after their safe arrival in Greece, brought along 750 sheep, 250 goats, 100 head of cattle, and 45 pack animals. Although the border between Com- munist Albania and free Greece is almost inaccessible in many places, more than 18,000 persons have fled from that smallest Soviet satellite since the Communist take-over in 1944. The Nikolas brothers, from the port city of Valona, "liberated" a small, state-owned, diesel-powered calque, the DINAMO, for their escape to freedom. After drugging the skipper and two Albanian soldiers, Thanasis and Christos Nikolai took the small boat southward to the greek isle of Corfu. ? ESCAPE FROM COMMUNIST ALBANIA By Hark Piros et? The borderline between Communist Albania and Greece runs over high Mountains, along deep ravines, and through thick forests. Communist guards, accompanied by trained dogs, move along the Albanian side. As in all Sino- Soviet bloc countries bordering on the free world, barriers and traps of various kinds seal off the boundarie s. Escape seems impossible. Yet the people get out. the 1944 Communist take-over of Albania, 18,000 Albanians have The many barriers to flight, as well as the difficulties of seem only to spur the people to find new means of escape and of bravery they would not have dreamed of under other years since In the fifteen become refugees,, life in Albania, to perform feats circumstances. The most spectacular of all escapes from Albania was achieved by a tribe of nomadic shepherds -- 13 men, 13 women, and 30 children (moat of them under 12), who were members of nine family groups -- the largest number of escapees ever to enter Greece at one time. The tribe brought with them 750 sheep, 250 goats, 100 head of cattle, 45 pack animals (horses and mules), a few farm implements, and a considerable quantity of personal belongings. lot; Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release BSCAft FROM COMMUNIST ALBANIA These escapees were Xuteevlachs (usually called Vlachs), who. trace their origin back to the days of the Roman empire. They are Orthodox Christians. Under the Communist regime of Albania, their herds were gradually being nationalized. Before the Communists came to power, the tribe had owned more than 5,000 goats and sheep and 200 peak animals. Without any compensation whatsoever, 3,000 of the goats and sheep were confiscated by the Communists and, to settle new and exorbitant taxes, the Vlachs had to sell another 1,000 goats and sheep. They had heard that even their remaining 1,000 sheep were to be nationalized within a few. months. This would have made the Vlachs servants of the state and they would have received only a monthly pittance to tend the flocks which they formerly owned. "We grazed our sheep, we fattened them like stall-fed lambs and we could not enjoy anything," one of the escapees said. "The Albanian government took everything from us. We had to give 300 grams of wool for each ewe to the government and all the milk and cheese we made. For all this they gave us a few pennies. So almost nothing was left to us, and we lived on milk which we used to steal and with the maize we were allocated. We had terrible hunger." Leaving the "Tibet of Europe," as Albania is sometimes called, was no easy proposition for the Vlachs. The plan they ultimately adopted was based on an ancient Vlach custom -- that of following their flocks to wherever there was good grazing. 106 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ESCAPE FROM COMMUNIST ALBANIA (Before the Communists took over, the Vlachs had spent their winters in the ),alleysof Albania and their summers in the Greek mountains. After Albania became a Soviet satellite, however, the Vlachs were not permitted to summer in nearby Greece -- the shepherds were forced to remain in Albania and make the best of whatever green grass was available.) Planning for the escape began two years before it was actually made. At first only four families were involved. As thl first step in their the women and children did not know of the scheme, the men of this group -- escape plan until it was all over -- asked the regime for permission to use grazing land along the frontier. The land requested was assigned to them -- but as a precaution the Communist officials required that an additional family, one in whom the regime had complete confidence, join the group and graze its flocks along with the others. The head of this fifth family, Fotos Bassios, although he was a Communist Party member, actually became the leader of the group and used his influence to conceal its real intentions from the Albanian officials. First, however, he insisted that four other families (all relatives of his) be allowed to join in the flight from Albania. So the group increased to nine families and their flocks. Each day the shepherds moved their animals closer to the frontier, meanwhile studying every habit of the Communist border guards. Over the months - 107 ...xemmrwmar-- [t Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ESCAPE FROM COMMUNIST ALBANIA the soldiers on frontier duty became so used to seeing the Vlachs grazing their herds that they rarely paid-much attention to them. On the night set for the escape, the guards did not think it unusual that the nomads had made their camp practically on the border. There was one remaining obstacle: a vicious sheep dog, used by the border patrol and owned by one of the guards. The shepherds, however, were able to buy the dog for 20 kilograms of cheese. The actual border crossing took place at sunset, September 4, 1956, when. the guards going off duty met their replacements at some distance from the border. At this point, one of the shepherds engaged the soldiers in a conversation, offering them some scarcecigarettes. The conversation was pro- longed until the entire tribe, animals and all, was across the border. The bells hanging from the animals necks had been stuffed with grass to keep them from ringing. At dawn the Albanian guards learned of the trick, but by then the Vlachs and their entourage of animals were safely inside the mountains of Greece. The shepherd who had detained the guards took a mountain path and joined the escapees later. One of the tribe's leaders told Greek officials that the group's mein reason for escaping from "the Albanian hell" was the mass arrests of innocent citizens characterized by the regime as "reactionaries." He mentioned other examples of terrorism, as well as the nationalization of tribal flocks and heavy state taxes. 108 ESCAPE FROM COMMUNIST ALBANIA. He said the Vlachs had not been allowed to buy radio sets or listen to broadcasts from other countries. "We came here because we preferred freedom to hunger and slavery," the spokesman added. Other Albanian refugees took different routes. The Nikolas brothers, who escaped from Albania's large port city of Valona, would never have succeeded if they had tried to go to Greece overland. Valona is far from the border, and the two brothers knew they could never find their way through the wild, forest- covered mountains of Albania. So they chose the sea, with which they were well acquainted. Thanasis, the elder brother, had been a mechanic on board a small, state-owned, diesel-powered caique, the DINAMO. In order to escape, the Nikolas brothers decided they would also have to "liberate" the boat, its 65-year-old Albanian skipper and two other Albanian crewmen. One night, when the boat was due to sail from Valona with a cargo of used automobile tires for Santi Quaronta, Thanasis Nikolas told his skipper and the two crewmen that he had been to a wedding of a relative and had brought back some foodstuffs and a quantity of wine. He invited them to enjoy the feast with him. Just before the boat was scheduled to depart, the four men sat on the deck to enjoy the treat. Wine flowed freely. The skipper remarked casually on its peculiar odor, but was told by Thanasis that it was customary, ? in his district to put perfume in wine at weddings. In reality the wine was drugged. By midnight the skipper and the two soldiers were fast asleep. Thanasis put a red light on top of the boat's 109 ? .?????' Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 11???? Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ESCAPE FROM COMMUNIST ALBANIA mast -- a signal to his brother, Christo, who was hiding near the dock, that all was clear. Christo swam silently to the boat, holding his clothes over his head. Thanasis then started the engine and glided out of the harbor un- molested by the harbor police, Who knew the boat was due to sail that night. Dawn found them on a southward course to Corfu. The skipper awoke from his drugged sleep and begged to be put ashore on the Albanian coast. Since that would have Meant immediate capture by Albanian guards, the request was:refused. Shortly afterwards, they reached Corfu and freedom. Other escapes were more dangerous, both as a result of the number of persons concerned and the circumstances. The escape of the Filis family was endangered by the presence of a tiny, child, Whose cries could easily alert the border guards. This family, consisting of nine women and children and a twelve-year-old crippled boy, crossed the Albanian-Greek border in March 1954 under the leadership of 65-year-old Mrs. Vasiliki Fili. In the early part of March, when snow lies thick on the high mountains on both sides of the border, this scantily-clad group started their journey in the middle of the night. They not only had to avoid the Albanian border patrol, but also the wolveal and bears made vicious by cold and hunger. Added to these dangers was a constant fear that the small child might cry and so betray the group's presence to the Communist border guards. Fully aware of this danger, Mrs. Fili did not hesitate when the child began to whimper; she ordered that a piece of cloth be put in the child's mouth to stifle its 'cries, despite her own fears that this might cause suffocation. 110 ESCAPE FROM COMMUNIST ALBANIA In March 1959, after completing an extensive study of the European refugee situation, the Zellerbach Commission reported that "During the course of 1958, refugees continued to enter Greece from her Communist neighbors to the north (both Albania and Bulgaria) at the rate of some 30 or 40 per month. It is noteworthy that, while the average age of the escapee arriving in Greece during 1947 to 1958 was thirty years, today the average age is twenty-five years. It is also significant that the escapees arriving today are generally in much poorer health than were the escapees five or ten years ago, and many of them require considerable medical and dental attention." 111 iF Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 I FLEW A GLIDER OUT OF COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA By Jiri Kinski ,414+04' ( On a Sunday in May 1959, a two-seated glider landed almost unobserved at Vienna's Schwechat airport. Slowly, a young man climbed out of the seat. Exhaustion and relief were written on his face. The following days Austrian newspapers reported that he was a 29-year-old building surveyor, Jiri Kinskil who had flown his glider out of Communist Czechoslovakia and asked for political asylum. He told Austrian police that he did not want to put his services at the disposal of a government he detested. ? Kinskils daring flight in a motorless craft dependent on wind currents is only one of the many methods that have been used to escape Communist rule. This is Kinskiis own story.) Although my flight to freedom from Communist Czechoslovakia seems a spur-of-the-moment thing, in reality I had planned it years in advance. I hive always liked to live dangerously -- perhaps that is one of the reasons I wanted to become a pilot. Although I was ready to take risks to reach Austria, I tried to reckon with every conceivable possibility. But in the end only sheer luck saved me and helped MB to reach Vienna. I used to live in Brno, in the center of Czechoslovakia, where I belonged to the local gliding association. One Sunday in May of this year I was allowed to take part in a glider training flight in Bratislava, which I knew was very near the Austrian border. 112 's .. I FIAT A GLIDER OUT OF COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA After the take-off I immediately felt how strong the wind from Austria was blowing. First, I scanned the horizon to make sure there were no military planes about. Then I went into a steep glide toward the March River, which is the border between Czechoslovakia and Austria. Suddenly, a strong gust pushed my plane northward, away from the border. I struggled and maneuvered in vain: I simply could not get into position to cross the bordar area. For four hours I circled over the frontier, filled with a growing fear that I might have aroused suspicion and would be forced to land again on Czech territory. 'I was beginning to give up hope. At last a strong blast of west wind took me high enough for a ]Ong glide to the Schwechat airport in Vienna. As I said before, I had been planning this flight for a long time. After I finished my regular term in the Army, a friend of my father's helped me to enter the Air Academy. I had never liked the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, which had been in power sinoe I was 15. But I knew it was necessary, if you wanted to get along, to show enthusiasm for "socialism" (comnuniam). After the first year, I was the third best in our class. I knew, of course, that every squad in our class contained at least one Communist Party "activist" who kept an eye on us. We jokingly called these people "the amateurs." And then there were the real secret police officials. They checked on what the regime called "wrong thoughts" or spoke up at our regular"tutualcriticism meetings" to accuse people of "incolrect behaviour." Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 I Fall A GLIDE.a OUT OF COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA On top of this, the personnel officer, or cadre chief, had charge of everyone's personal file. These files, although never seen by us, contained data about our "political reliability." Two or three times we had to supply a great many facts about ourselves, our families and the jobs they held and their political viewpoints and class-standing. obviously, a year friends, The personnel officer could always call us up for a private talk about this information, about any change from previous answers or about anything we may have been reported as saying and that might be construed as "bourgeois" or "reactionary." As a result of all this, of course, we had a constant feeling of being watched. Unfortunately, I forgot this feeling on one occassion. This sealed my fate at the Academy. I had a good friend in the same class. We used to go out together. Sometimes we joked about our classmates or some of our superiors. One day we were reading our aviation magazine which, for the first time, contained some pictures of American-made jet fighters. The paper compared them - naturally in an unfavourable light - to Soviet jet planes. I remarked that the Soviet planes were certainly better but that the American ones somehow looked nicer. That was all that I said; I did not say anything against the government or ridicule Soviet aviation. The next day I was called to see the personnel officer. I was reported .to have said that Soviet planes were obsolete and American jets were better. Then be went on to quote -- in a much sharper form than they were originally said -- all my mocking remarks of the last months. 11h al? I Faw A GLIDER OUT t ? ): 'Jim) e tr,i.;Git)SIDVAKIA "You are irresponsible, infected by alien influences, you have sided with American imperialism, you have no place in our Academy," be concluded. I was not given a chance to defend myself. The classmate I had believed to be my friend was in fact a stool-pigeon who had been ordered to spy on me. One hour later an extraordinary meeting of the class was convened. The director of the school himself informed my schoolmates of the reasons why I was being expelled from the school. This took place in 1954. Before Stalin's death, for the same offense I would have been immediately arrested and taken to Pankrac, the investigating prison in Prague. But considering my age and unblemished past, I was given a chance to recognize the "correct" line and to better myself. I want to work in a large manufacturing plant in Brno which produced factory equipment for export, mainly for Middle East countries. I worked first as an unskilled worker and earned 650 crowns a month. Considering that I had to support my old father -- my mother had died long ago --,the regime's much- publicized "economic boom" passed me by. My salary waslow evens byour standards, although hundreds of thousands had the same wage. What can you do with 650 crowns? You pay little for rent, it is true. Books are cheap and plentiful. There are many inexpensive concerts. But what if you have to support two people with this sum of 650 crowns? A modest meal in a restaurant costs 20 crowns, a liter of average wine 20 to 25 crowns, a pound of sausages 15, sugar five crowns. Coffee, at 80 crowns a pound, or a pound of cocoa costing 27 crowns, are luxuries which many people simply cannot afford. You must save for months and months to buy a good shirt. 115 II Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 I FLEW. A GLIDER OUT 0 COMMUNIST CZECHOSLOVAKIA You buy one for 65 crowns, but it goes to pieces very quickly and a better one cannot be had for less than 80 to 100 crowns. A ready-made suit of good material costs 1000 to 1200 crowns. An underpaid worker like myself could earn enough to buy one suit in two months -- if be did not also have to buy foods Such was our boom! There are not many who can get by with their monthly. wages. A white-collar worker with an income of 1,200 crowns, but with three children to support, would be in about the same financial situation I was. To be sure, a sizable group, which includes selected Party workers, or film people, or high officials, or even quite a few peasants who have not yet been forced into the collective farms, lives quite well. They can afford to buy a Czech Skoda-Spartak car for 27,000 crowns. But the average worker cannot even dream of buying a car. About two years ago my pay was raised to 800 crowns. My father had died, and I had to take care only of myself. After that, I began to live somewhat more comfortably. I was even admitted to the gliding club in Brno. But my personal file or, to put it better, my former personnel officer's word, was still guiding my fate. Since my expulsion from the Air Academy, I had been a "patriotic and vigilant" citizen. I had worked overtime, often without pay. But all my efforts had been of no avail. As an unreliable element I could not get a job as a pilot. I could not qualify for a passport or a good job. Why didn't I go to another town? In every factory and school, in every workshop and on every street you find the same figures: the constant watchers -- both "amateurs" and "professionals." There was no escape from the regime's agents. 116 ? I FLEW A GLIDER-OUT 010 C CZECHOSIOVAKIA The living standard had improved a bit, it is true, but life was still drab, boring, and over-regulated. For me it was filled with a nerve- racking concern: when would I be denounced once again? There had been no weakening of the constant control by the regime no relaxation of the permanent tension. Not a meek passed without a political trial in Prague, Brno or elsewhere. And always, according to the Communist regime, new "spies" and "parasites" were being unmasked. Recently, a childhood friend of mine, a talented actor in Pilsen, VAS sentenced to three years imprisonment. His crime? He was said to have hated the Communist regime, been revolted by socialist (that is, Communist) realism and to have ridiculed some of his colleagues who happened to be members of the Communist Party. We used to get together fairly. regularly. When I heard of his trial, I felt a chill. It was then that I made my decision. I bad to leave my country -- and the sooner the better. 117 z,J Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ? O. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHY I LEFT RUMANIA By Vasile Berkovic (Vasile Berkovic is neither a hero, nor a coward. He is just one of the many thousands who have known bleakness and fear for too long, who are sick of the past and worried about the future. Vasile Berkovic is a refugee who left his native Rumania a few months ago. Here is his awn story.) I was a bookkeeper, as was my father. My parents left me a little house in Roman. That is the place where we all lived, in Moldava province, not far from Jassy. Till 1955, I had not even dreamed of leaving my hometown, my house, my relatives, everything. I had a regular job as bookkeeper in a cooperative which produced building materials. My salary-was 980 lei per month. This was quite good pay, three children. year for a coat enough to live on, to feed my family: my wife, Ana and the We managed to clothe ourselves even though we had to save all or a good suit. A man's suit of cheap cloth costs about 700 lei, a pair of bad quality shoes 400 lei, and they wear out very quickly. Still, we knew that most people earned less and even a physician could not earn more than 1000 lei. Suddenly, it was in September 1955) 15 employees were sacked over- night, including me. Special commissions purged all the cooperatives, firms, and offices in Roman. Hundreds of so-called "unreliable elements," former 118 _ in Darl? - arlIfI7d Cony Approved for Release ella I LEFT RUMANIA merchants or vine-dealers, were dismissed. Nothing like that ever happened before in our town. We had a little money at home, but it could hardly have stretched out for more than a few weeks. I was not so young any more; at 48 I had lost most of my former zest and energy. Even if we had wanted to, we could not have left Roman, since it was forbidden to change one's residence. Through friends, bit by bit I built up a shaky existence again. I worked for five or six firms as a part-time bookkeeper. I scraped together 500 lei monthly. We had to cut our expenses. This went on for one year. Then one of these firms offered me a permanent job with a salary of 600 lei. Four months later the government ordered a thorough reorganization of the state and commercial apparatus. Once again I lost my job. We -- Ana and I -- talked over the situation. We did not care for politics; all that kind of talk -- meetings and speeches. Who really cares, except for a handful of them? We had to think of getting money for food. It took all a man's time. Next I worked as a bookkeeper, first at one building site, then another. I worked harder and lived worse than ever before. I received 400 lei monthly and had to feed a family of five. One hundred lei a week vhen one pound of fat cost 10 lei, sugar seven lei, the cheapest meat 10 lei. My wife had to stand in long queues. We did not have enough money, we could not afford black market prices. She stood in line hour after hour, searching for bargains in clothing and food. She was ill, she had circula- tory trouble and she had to stand one hour here, two hours there hour after 119 ? 5 -Yr 04/03 CIA RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHY I LEFT RUMANIA The veues take the heart out of you. Sales people simply do not care. Nobody cares. Why should they care? They earned just as little as I did. This dreary struggle of daily life wears out everybody. Just getting to the butcher's counter takes hours and then you cannot get what you want. Rumania once was a gay country. But now? Everybody is impatient and grim. But who can blame them? So many irritations, and the people are tired, terribly tired. Still, if I think of the fate of my brother-in-law, I must say that on the whole we have been more fortunate. He was a merchant before the Communist take-over. Then he went to work in a shop. Last summer he was denounced, possibly by a neighbour, because "he lives luxuriously." What was his crime? Be bought, after one year of saving, two ready-made new suits on the same day. He was arrested and the secret police found three gold rings in his home. The rings were left to him by his parents. He is now in a concentration camp, near Doftana. He can write twice a year to his family. His wife is working now in the oil fields at Ploesti, earns 500 lei and takes care of her two daughters on that. Despite all this, it was a hard decision to leave Roman. My parents and grand-parents are buried there. I hardly knew any other city. I had not even been to Bucharest once. But my wife and I felt that we had to go for the sake, for the future of our three children. Ours is not a special case, but rather a typical one. Hundreds of thousands would like to follow in our footsteps. 120 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 INTEGRATED REFUGEES NOM Above 1,000,000 & 500,000 to 999.999 EWYM Below 500,000 UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS TOTAL UNRESOLVED REFUGEE CASES V Over 300,000 X 100,000 to 299,999 25,000 to 99,999 11111111111 1,000 to 24,999 Below 1,000 REFUGEES UNDER MANDATE OF UNHCR ? Over 100,000 * 50,000 to 100,000 1,000 to 50,000 ? Below 1,000 -"." ?.? ? v?r.,,.; 4 . , Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 i Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 PART 11 THE RESULTS "It is dangerous for anyone to generalize as to the consequences to society of the refugee problem... There must be definite consequences of a wholly negative character in the countries of origin although, for obvious reasons, we know all too little of the facts. The denudation of the countryside and farmlands, the tale of deserted villages and the failure to recolonize, the loss of manpower with traditional skills are factors known to be operating against the achievement of economic sta- bility in Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. It is estimated that the fiungarian exodus lost that country the equivalent of two years natural increase... "The same story holds, in other countries of origin, in the realm of intellectual wealth. The deliberate attempt to exterminate the intellec- tual and liberal leadership in the Baltic states resulted in almost all the survivors of that group becoming refugees." ? El fan Rees, Centunt of the Home l ess Man, publ i shed by fhT Carne9i e Endoment for International Peace, united Nations PI aza at 46th Street, New York, N.Y. ...?1???10.1111, ??? ?fl. WHY THEY FLED: A NEW ANALYSIS OF SOME OF THE 200,000 HUNGARIAN REFUGEES By Dr. Lawrence E. Hinkle, Jr. Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine, Cornell University Medical College, New York (Dr. Hinkle is also Executive Director of the Human Ecology Study Program of New York Hospital- Cornell Medical Center in New York City. The Ecology Group scientifically studies the mutual relations between men and their environments. Dr. Hinkle's raport was part of an investigation of Hungarian refugees made by . a team of nearly 30 scientists, including physicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, psychologists and cultural anthropoligists. The study revealed that Communist attempts to indoctrinate young people, students and workers through propaganda, education and other measures, have been "singularly ineffective" in eradicating anti- Communist feelings among Hungarians.) In recent years those engaged in the Human Ecology Study Program at Cornell University have investigated the relation between health, behavior, life experiences, and the social environment, in more than three thousand people, including refugees from the Hungarian freedom uprising of 1956. A total of 69 Hungarian refugees have been interviewed, examined, and observed at the research facilities of the Human Ecology Study Program in New York. The group of informants was carefully chosen to include students, scientists, members of professions, intellectuals, skilled and semi-skilled workers, and adolescents, whose motives and behavior were of special interest because of the leading role that such people had taken in the Revolution of 1956. Only a few farmer landowners and members of the old middle class were included. Some of those studied had held positions of trust and responsibility Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 123 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHY THEY FLED: A NEW ANALYSIS OF SOME OF THE 200,000 HUNGARIAN REFUGEES -' in the Hungarian Communist State, and had been favored members of the society. Many of them had been acceptable to the Communist Party, and had been assoc- iated with its ancillary activities, although they were not actually Party members. To include data from former Party members as well, some of the staff of the Study Program vent to Great Britain where they tested, interviewed, and examined seven additional refugees who had been active Communists-- some of whom considered themselves still to be so. Although the goal of the investigation was to determine, as far as possible, the factors that had had an important influence upon the behavior and health of these Hungarians, much effort was focused upon an attempt to determine why these people fought and fled. The observations give no support to the idea that the revolution and the subsequent exodus of some 200,000 Hungarians were simply the result of the unpremeditated action of people swept up in a wave of mass emotion. On the contrary, they indicate that those who participated in these events had long-term, deep-seated, realistic, and highly personal motives for their actions. This was true of nearly everyone studied, regardless of his background or behavior; it was such a regular observation among the students, adolescents, workers, teachers, scientists, and professional people, that there is very good reason to believe it is true of the refugee group in general. Their motives fell into two general categories. The first of these :was a long-term and insurmountable feeling of personal insecurity-- an 124 WHY THEY FL): A NEW ANALYSIS OF SOME OF ME 200,000 HUNGARIAN REFUGEES di.. implicit belief that "no matter mtat I do, or how high a position I may attain, I and my family may be ruined at any time by the actions of others, or by events beyond my control." The second was a profound sense of frustration - a deep- seated conviction that "in Communist Hungary there is no way that I can live out my life as I want to, and in a manner that satisfies my needs." The motives of the individual refugees were not based upon irrational and generally shared prejudice, upon unformulated fear, or upon abstract polltical or religious convictions; they were based upon personal expe- rience with confiscation, denunciation, arrest, imprisonment, and the denial of jobs, housing, and education. Such motives were as strong in those who had been ostensibly favored by the Communist regime as they were in those who had been officially designated as "class aliens". None of the informants not even those in a position to be well- informed -- had expected the freedom revolution to occur when it did. No group had planned it. The great majority of the informants had not been aware that many other Hungarians felt as strongly as they did. Yet all of them had been aware of their awn intense dissatisfaction for many years past, and a very significant proportion of them had privately decided, long previously, that they would flee from the country, or take part in rebellion, at the first opportunity. In this they were supported by their families -- even by family members who knew that they would be left behind. Thus the fight and flight of an individual might have been sudden, but his behavior was not unrealistic, and not entirely unpremeditated. nprlassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 ? CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 125 II. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHY THEY FLED: A MI ANALYSIS OF SOME OF THE 200,000 HUNGARIAN REFUGEES - Economic deprivation was a poor determinant of behavior. Some of those who participated most vigorously in the revolt were people who were economically better off than they might have been under the old regime, and knew it; others, including members of the old middle class and former landowners, who had been reduced to abject poverty, took no part in the fighting, but simply fled. The group as a whole were relatively little concerned about the economic organization of the society. Their resentments were focueeo upon its "police state" aspects -- its arbitrariness, its restrictions, its brutal- ity, and its unpredictability. Only a minority of our informants had participated in the actual fighting, although all had sympathized with the revolution and many had sup- ported it tacitly or by ancillary activities. The group as a whole displayed a deep-seated hostility toward Russians. This had been strongly reinforced by Soviet behavior during the past fifteen years ?oviet troops have been in Hungary since the end of World War 0; but there was much evidence that anti-Russian attitudes existed in their parents before World War II, and that the younger generation had derived their awn attitudes primarily from those of their parents. The refugees had a similar deep-seated hostility toward the people who made up the central Communist Government group, and toward many of the local functionaries and hangers-on. Attempts by the Communists to indoctrinate young people, students, and workers by means of propaganda, education, and other activities had been singularly ineffective in eradicating such attitudes. 126 neclassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 745=1.1t WHY THEY FLED: A NEW ANALYSIS OF SOME OF THE 200,000 HUNGARIAN REFUGEES - Even favored young members of the Communist Party -- students and intellectuals who were relatives of prominent Communists, who had grown up in the Party, and who had no real memory of life as it was before 1947 -- were disillusioned and bitterly opposed to the Communist system. These citizens of a police state had learned to form their beliefs and attitudes from what they saw and knew, rather than from what they heard or read. They regarded some socialist economic reforms as desirable, but for communism and Communists they had only contempt and hostility. The effect that our informants' experiences during the past fifteen years have had upon their health was also of interest to us. A majority of these people had experienced an increased number of episodes of all varieties of illness during periods when they were having difficulty in making a satisfactory adaptation to their social environment, and most notably during periods when they felt insecure, frustrated, and threatened because of their position in the Communist society. This increase in illness appeared to be largely the result of physiological and psychological changes associated with attempts to adapt to an extremely difficult life situation, rather than being simply the result of fatigue, injury, poor diet, or other physical aspects of the environment. We have not previously encountered a group of people in wham such a profound degree of insecurity and frustration had been induced by the social environment in which they lived. It is evident that the Hungarian Communists were far from creating a welfare state in which everyone was socially secure and without conflict or care -- quite the contrary: they had created a society so rigid, arbitrary, unpredictable, danger-laden, and beyond the control of 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 127 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WRYTHEYTLED: A NEW ANALYSIS OF SC ME OF THE 200,000 HUNGARIAN REFUGEES the individual, that a great proportion of the citizens, including sane of the Communists themselves, were ready to takeany desperate measure necessary to destroy it or escape from it. 128 f'? ? WHAT THE LOSS OF REFUGEES DOES TO A COMMUNIST COUNTRY (Excerpts from a Report by the Population Reference Bureau, Inc.) --:f?trt (The Population Reference Bureau was founded in 1929 in Washington, D. C., as a nonprofit, scientific, educational organization for the purpose of gathering, correlating and distributing papulation data.) Communist East Germany is rapidly becoming an aging, economic desert in contrast to youthful, prosperous West Germany. As a direct result of dramatic population changes, Germany now has the oldest work force and next to the lowest birth rate in Europe. Since the end of World War II, more than 3,500,000 East Germans have fled to the free German Federal Republic. West Germany (including West Berlin), with an estimated present population of 53.7 million -- almost three times East Germany's population of 17.4 million -- now ranks as the most populous country in western Europe. These are some of the important factors in East Germany's decline and West Germany's resurgence: The vast flow of able-bodied population from East to West continues without let-up. Each day a large village in effect "moves" westward across the border between the two Germanys. For the last five years, refugees have been coming over at the rate of almost a quarter million a year. Significantly, most are young people of working age -- a fact that spells serious economic trouble for East Germany... Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 129 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHAT THE LOSS OF REFUGEES DOES TO A COMMUNIST COUNTRY In addition to East German refugees, West Germany's population now includes millions of Germans and persons of German descent who at the end of the war were driven out of the Eastern European satellites and former German territory presently under Polish rule. By 1950, eight million had arrived at West German borders. Historically, the Soviet-occupied portion of Germany (now the "German Democratic Republic"), embracing 41,478 square miles, was primarily agricultural. The big industrial complexes like the Ruhr were within the 94,719 square miles of the Allied-occupied zones, now the German Federal Republic. In 1950, the last year for which reliable figures are available, the median age of workers in the Soviet zone was 42 for men and 36 for women. In addition, women comprised 42 percent of its industrial workers. Figures released recently by the West German Government show that in the years 1952-1958, 50.3 percent of the refugees from East Germany were under 25 years of age and another 27.8 percent between the ages of 25 and 45. Short of a sharp reversal in the trend of her birth rate -- and there seems no likelihood of that in the near future, East Germany cannot hope for births to redress her migration losses, currently more than three times the natural increase (births over deaths) of her population. Because of the continuing migration of young people, and in contrast to a slowly rising birth rate in West Germany, the East German birth rate is slipping steadily lower. From 16.9 in 1951, it fell to 16.3 in 1955, to 15.9 in 1956, and to 15.6 in 1957 -- the last year for which figures are available. West Germany's birth rate climbed from 16.5 in 1950 to an even 17.0 in 1937. 130 cella !zed CoDy AiDiDrov for Rel WHAT THE LOSS OF REFUGEES DOES TO A COMMUNIST COUNTRY Unless this steady drain of population, especially as it affects younger people, is arrested in some way, East Germany will have fewer and fewer men to operate her factories and farms, more and more women joining her labor force and a mounting dependency ratio, with the East Germani economy having to provide for an ever higher proportion of non-productive citizens. ? 50 Yr 2014/04/03 CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ? ? 131 0- ." .4 ? "0. /N. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE SOVIET REDEFECTION CAMPAIGN: ITS SUCCESSES AND FAILURES (Excerpts from the Zellerbach Commission's report, "Refugees in Europe") t4OIRO*,ir4104rt The Zellerbach Commission was created by the International Rescue Committee in late 1957 to survey the condition of the refugees in Europe. The seven mem- bers of the Commission visited through the main centers of refugee settlement in the fall of 1957 and composed their first report in the spring of 1958. A supplemen- tary report updating the first one was issued on March 15, Ig904eWl In early 1955 the Soviet Union and its satellite nations simultane- - ? ously embarked on a redefection campaign of international scope. Amnesty de- crees were passed, assuring all the refugees who had fled their countries that they would suffer no penalty on their return. In virtually every city of Western Europe and the Western hemisphere whore Iron Curtain refugees had settled in substantial number, the redefection campaign, lavishly financed and supported by a network of agents and informers became an instrument of fear in refugee circles. Russians, Poles, Hungarians and others who had left their countries many years previously and had begun to feel confident that the Communists knew nothing of their whereabouts and cir- cumstances, suddenly began to receive letters, newspapers and circulars, sent to them at their current address. The literature and letters were supplemented by radio broadcasts in every refugee language, appealing to the refugees on patriotic grounds to return home. Finally, there were personal visits from Soviet agents, who employed techniques ranging all the way from saccharine suasion to outright kidnapping. 1.32 ifrt"agoit:At ,1/4.,',.-'7ilirlq6OVIET-11112FEC-1110N CAMPAIGN: "ITS SU@GESSES AND ITS FAILURES The reason for the redefection campaign was obvious. Every refugee who was successfully settled abroad was a living argument against Communism; every refugee who redefected to his homeland after experience in the free world becomes a living argument in the service of the Communist lie. At first, the campaign had some sensational success. It was par- ticularly easy to appeal to the refugees who were broken and embittered (by the readjustment difficulties they had encountered). At the height of the campaign, several very large groups of Iron Curtain refugees returned from Latin America to their Communist-dominated homelands. Of course, there was a tremendous fanfare on the subject by Communist propaganda. The redefection propaganda campaign, although it still persists, has been tapering off. The reason for this tapering off, it can be safely assumed, has been the diminishing rate of return. Those who were weak or broken and psychologically prepared to succumb, succumbed during the early months of the campaign. The overwhelming majority, however, were not prepared to surrender their freedom despite the economic difficulties under which many of them were living. At the present time, the redefection campaign publishes three news- papers in Russian and several in the satellite languages. These are regularly dispatched to a great number of refugees in Western Europe. Apparently, however, the refugees with the exception of the Hungarians CA 110 are receiving far fewer letters from near relatives urging them to return. Other techniques still employed include personal visits to refugees at their homes, or meetings with them while they are attending conferences, congresses, etc., in free world countries. In France, the consulates regularly Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 133 a Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE SOVIET REDEFECTIAMONIGNV'MU"SUCCSgSESAAND IF 'L attempt to entice the refugees with cultural programs in their own language. These are often well attended, because in many cases they are the only events of their kind to which the refugee has access. However, the rosy descriptions of life behind the Iron Curtain, which are fed to the refugees in the course of these cultural programs, are counter- acted in part by private letters which they receive from their homeland. "I am working like a slave," a Czechoslovak refugee who returned in 1956 wrote to a friend in Paris. "I found no room and prices are so high that I must work 12 hours a day and even Sundays to earn the bare mihimgm, I could kick myself when I think of my life in Paris. Now I am living here like a dog without hope or future. The redefection campaign is most active among the Russian refugees. The activities of the Soviet agents charged with winning the refugees back are centralized through the "Committee for Return to the Homeland", which has its headquarters at Schadowstrasse 18 in the Soviet sector of Berlin. The committee has a radio station and it broadcasts in Russian, Ukrainian, Ruthenian and the other regional languages of the USSR. It has Berltn, where redefectors are lodged prior to mittee for the Return to the Homeland has its special reception centers in East their return to Russia. The Com- agents at every point where there is a concentration of Russian refugees. These agents distribute literature and pamphlets, spread news and rumors and pay personal visits to those refugees who Show signs of being psychologically prepared. In some cases, also, the Soviet embassies play a direct role in enticing redefectors and assisting redefection agents. o.4,-ttrItt titsT.p.rol;;;-: 't2 ; 4+ 1 ????? ? ? ? ; ? ..^ ; 11.' to 3.11f,.. ? V/. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? THE SOVIET REDEFECTION CAMPAIGN: ITS SUCCESSES AND ITS FAILURES Most of the Russian redefectors came from Argentina and other Latin American countries. In France, a certain number of old White Russian immigrants decided to return. From Western Germany, where the activities of the Berlin committee are most energetic, the number of redefectors returning to Russia recently has amounted to only five or six a month. Among the redefectors, it goes without saying, there is always a certain number of Communist agents, who are recalled home after having com- pleted longer or shorter assignments in the West. The Communist propaganda machine makes great use of such cases to demonstrate that "the refugees are returning home" -- and the Communist agents, posing as once-genuine refugees who had been disillusioned by their experience with the West, deliver eloquent tirades over the Commnnist radio. The redefection campaign has also been active among the Hungarian refugees. Official figures list more than 5,400 repatriations from Austria, 2,700 from Yugoslavia, and 2,200 from other countries. The actual numbers are undoubtedly higher. The Hungarian Communist regime has been making par- ticularly strenuous efforts to promote the repatriation of the young people who escaped without their parents. The Communist regime in Budapest has left no stone unturned in attempting to repatriate the teen-age refugees. Their representations to the western governments and to the United Nations have had little effect, however. Thum far the free world countries have refused to return Hungarian minors unless it was their clearly expressed desire to go home. Much more serious are the letters which the youthful refugees fre- quently receive from their parents imploring them to come home and assuring 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 l35 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE SaVIET RECTION CAMPAIGN: ITS SUCCESSES AND ITS FAILURES them, that they will not be punished for their defection.. More frequently than not, however, the first letter is followed by?a second letter in which, either openly or in coded language, the parents let their children know that the first letter was written under pressure and that they really-wish them to remain in the Walt. 136 WHAT HAPPENS TO BERMS WHO GO HOME (From a Report by the International League for the Rights of Man) The Communist regime in Hungary has imprisoned, exiled or executed 6,000 refugees who fled their homeland following Soviet suppression of the 1956 freedom revolt but later returned after being assured that they would not be harmed. In addition, many others have suffered through official discrim- ination against relatives and friends of the refugees who returned to Hungary. This persecution:, violates the pledges made by Hungarian authorities to respect the rights of Hungarian refugees who accepted the declaration of amnesty and returned to their country. These three points were among the conclusions in a report recently given to the United Nations by the International League for the Rights of Man, a consultative agency accredited to the UN. The evidence was based on certified statements and testimony obtained from Hungarian refugees in Vienna by the Hungarian National Revolutionary Committee in Exile. The Documentation Service of the Hungarian Committee submitted the following general statement concerning the fate of Hungarian refugees who returned to Hungary: "The puppet government of Hungary published some time ago data claiming that 31:000 refugees out of the 200,000 who fled to the West have returned. The true figure, however, of those who have returned, is approximately 4,15.? Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 137 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHAT HAPPENS TO REFUGEES WHO GO HOME 21,000. The statisticians of the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior include, for purposes of propaganda, in the number of those who came back 'voluntarily', those who have in one way or another tried to escape to the West but were either physically stopped by the Hungarian authorities or were talked out of it by them. Naturally, many of those who did not succeed in escaping have been interned in camps or imprisoned. "Out of the 21,000 people who have returned to Hungary, approximately 6,000 were arrested and are either in prison or in internment camps. In the Internment camps of Kistarcsa and Recsk, the so-called "Westerners'. are in Isolated barracks and guarded by especially reliable police. Others ended up in prison because when they were brought before the Tribunals with the accusation of having spied for the West or of participation in the Revolu- tion, the judgment handed down considered the fact of their having fled to the West as an aggravating circumstance. "All those who have returned and are presently in prison or intern- ment camps had received previously at the Hungarian Legations of the countries where they were then living a 'letter of amnesty' promising them complete forgiveness. This letter, however, did not have any meaning once they arrived In Hungary. "By and large, the fate of the overwhelming majority of those who return is the following: For two or three weeks they can live undisturbed at their home. In some cases, they are even reinstated in their former jobs or can find new ones. After about two or three weeks, they are summoned to appear before the police, which in the case of those living in Budapest is on the third floor of Beak Ferenc Place Police station. The interrogating police ]35 ?,1 WHAT HAPPENS TO REFUGEES WHO GO HOME officer first of all reminds the returned refugee that he must be grateful to the People's Republic, which allowed his return in spite of his grave mistake! "After this, the police officer in a much stricter tone informs the person that he is in trouble because it has been discovered that he did not reveal some of his grave misdeeds when he petitioned the Legation to return home and thus he obtained amnesty under false pretences. The confused and frightened person is then informed by the police officer that he might avoid punishment and might be allowed to go free if he enters the service of the security organs and signs a statement to that effect. In case he is not willing to do so, he is taken directly to prison or to an internment "There are many among those who return to Hungary who did not get to their home at all and whose fate is completely unknown from the moment they crossed the Hungarian border. These were sent directly to prison or Internment camps and according to certain well documented information some of them were sent to the Soviet Union. "Here are a few cases in point: "Shortly before Christmas, 1957, two brothers, both students, Janos and Karoly Nagy, 22 and 19 years respectively, returned from France. Their letter of amnesty was made out by the Hungarian Legation in Vienna. The two brothers informed their parents of the time of their arrival home. They never got home and their fate since the time they crossed the Hungarian border is unknown. "Miklos Veto, a 42-year-old shopkeeper, returned in December 1957, with a letter of amnesty from Vienna to his home in Szeged. The reason for Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHAT HAPPENS TO REFUGEES WHO GO HOME his return was that his wife and son, who had. remained in Hungary, did not receive exit visas. Under the Nazi regime, Mr. Veto spent two years in Auschwitz. Approximately two weeks after his return to Szeged, he was sum- moned to the police station. There, he was beaten until unconscious and then interned for an indefinite time. "Istvan Korponai, a mechanic, returned 'ram Canada to his wife at Feherigarmat. The letter of amnesty was written by the Hungarian Legation in ,Montreal. Mr. Korponai spent four days altogether in his home after his return in November. After four days, he was taken away during the night and his work on lage as family was later informed that he was sent to the Soviet Union to a technical project. His wife was strongly advised to leave her vii- she would only 'contaminate' the atmosphere and anyhow, would not see her husband again. Since that time, the wife has been forced to work under her maiden name in Budapest. "Zoltan Petho0 a photographer by profession, received a statement of amnesty from the Hungarian Legation in Vienna in June 1958. On his return to Hnngary, he was immediately taken into custo4y at the border station, Hegyeshalom, and sent to the Fo utca prison in Budapest. They questioned him for six days, and a few days later he was taken to court. The Municipal Court of Budapest sentenced rrim to death; eight days later the Supreme Court approved the sentence. His petition for pardon was rejected. Zoltan Petho, repatriated on a statement of impunity, was executed twenty six days after his return. "Istvan Bauer, a locksmith, returned to Hungary from West Germany, carrying a written statement of eMnesty. Be passed the border station at 140 ArtAA".5',. WHAT HAPPENS TO REFUGEES WHO GO HOME Hegyeshalam in June 1958 but neNer reached his family midwife residing in Miskolc. "Two students, minors, asked for repatriation to return to their parents living in Szikszo. When questioned at the Hungarian Legation in Vienna, they admitted their activities during the insurrection. Despite this confession, impunity was promised to them and they received a written statement of amnesty. The parents received identical statements from the authorities in Szikszo. They arrived in the middle of May 1958.. ,At,the end of Juneil both were arrested and were never seen nor heard from again. "The Hungarian Government reportedly keeps records of those re- patriates who have technical skills or are experts. Most of them are trans- ferred to the Soviet Union. The following is an example: A printing machine constructor was expected to return to his family in Hungary. He never arrived home. Two months later the family received a postcard from an unidentified place in Russia saying that the .young man was working in his profession, but nothing more. "Another source revealed that a group of repatriated, skilled laborers in metallurgy (heavy industry) had been transferred to industrial centers in the Ukraine. After several months, the families received a stand- ardized post card from them, eight lines of an identical text. HA group of repatriated construction laborers was expected to return to their families in the Trans-Tisza region. Because of their skill, they were sent to an unknown part of the Soviet Union to construct drainage canals anh irrigation projects. They disappeared and have never been heard from or seen again.' Declassified- in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHAT HAPPENS TO REFUGEES WHO GO HOME "Thus many repatriates from the West disappear without any trace. It is almost impossible for those who return from the West to get a job or an apartment. According to a confidential governmental decree, those re- turning from the West cannot even be truck or taxi drivers. If they obtain such employment, they must be dismissed immediately. They cannot have a trade certificate, nor can they vote." The Hungarian Committee also submitted to the International League for the Rights of Mans which in tura submitted them to the United Nations, . three detailed sworn statements concerning refugees who returned to Hungary, The first -vas given by Janos Sarkany, a former automobile mechanic in Buda- Pest, who has twice fled his Communist-controlled homeland. His statement says: "I escaped with my wife and two daughters in November 1956, after the unhappy end of the Hungarian insurrection. We settled in Switzerland, where I immediately obtained work and good housing. However, I was overcome by nostalgia =dyes strongly aware of my language difficulties; but above all, the agents of the Hungarian Legation were tempting me with Seductive promises. I received written promises of amnesty; they promised me a good job and the return of my family home and vineyard (half an acre). As a result of the attraction of these promises, and also impelled by old remi- niscences, we agreed to repatriation in August 1957. "The first three weeks were quiet. I got a job and. was reinstalled in my house and vineyard. A few weeks later I was called to the police. I was examined and questioned, and they wanted to have information about me and. my activities during my emigration. Because I could not furnish satis- factory information, I was threatened. 142 ? WHAT HAPPENS TO REFUGEES WHO GO HOME "I was called again to the police and threatened again, and it seemed quite obvious that I had fallen into their net. I was suddenly dis- missed from my job, and each time I tried to get other employment, I could feel that my police record was following me. I covered the whole country without any result. During this time, my family did not even have sufficient food at home. "The next step was that they took away my home and the vineyard. My daughter was rejected from high school; as the daughter of a so-called 'Westerner', she was to have no opportunity to study. "In the fall of 19580 the police of Szodbathely called ne once more and the treatment was worse than ever. I then learned that a friend, a repa- triated refugee like myself, had disappeared, together with his family. I learned later that they had been interned in the camp at Toko/. After a few weeks, this friend of mine was released, but his family remained interned. When I met him, his face was covered with bruises and he told me that he had been compelled to become an 'informer'. "At the end of December, I was again called to the police and felt that this was the end. "On January 60 1959, we started for the border. At dawn we. cut the wires with a wire cutter I had. My-wife, my youngest daughter, and I passed safely through. my older daughter, however, stepped on a mine. I carried my wounded, bleeding daughter on my back across the border to Austria. Her leg had to be amputated in a hospital in Vienna." Janos Sarkany is still in Austria. His 18-year-old daughter Klara is still hospitalized there. < Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHAT HAPPENS TO REFUGEES WHO GO HOME The second individual statement concerns a Hungarian refugee who was less fortunate following his return to Communist Hungary. Istvan Lenz escaped from Hungary in January 1957. After spending a short time in a refugee csuip in Austria, he immigrated to West Germany and found employment in his profession. His wife tried to follow him, but when she attempted to dross the border, she was shot in her right arm and arrested. After three months she was released but had lost the use of her right arm. Her letters to Mt. Lenz were typed. In 1958, the agents of the Hungarian Communist regime began to lure Mt. Lenz back with promises. At the same time, the AVO secret agents wanted his 56-year old father, Gyula Lenz, to write to the son to return. Because he did not do so, the father was dismissed from his job. Knowing that Istvan Lenz' wife was unable to use her Agiat arm, the Com-. mmnist agents wrote, in her name, typewrittealsentimental letters calling hin back to Hungary. In Jay 1958, Istvan Lenz returned to Hunge.rywith.an amnesty letter issued by the Hungarian Legation in West Germany. He spent four days in his paternal home and then was arrested. A week later his father was also ar- rested.. The mother was evicted from her apartment and had to seek refuge with relatives. In September 19580 Istvan Lenz was accused and tried for spying for the "Western imperialists". His father was accused of participating in his activities. Istvan Lenz was sentenced to death and presumably executed. His father, Gyula Lenz, received a twelve-year prison sentence. In December 1958, Mts. Lenz received permission to send a parcel to her husband inprison, 144 WHAT HAPPENS TO REFUGEES WHO GO HOME but was not permitted to visit him. She received no permission to send anything to her son. This would confirm the rumor that he had been executed. A third sworn statement was given to the League by Pal Solti, a former member of the Hungarian Revolutionary Committee. He said: "I escaped from Hungary in December 1956 with my cousin, Janos Loos. Loos, then 20 years of age, had lived with his mother and step- father in Budafok? Tancaics Ucca 7. He had been employed by the State Rail- ways as an assistant fireman; meanwhile he was preparing for his examination as an engine driver. At the time of the insurrection, I was 21 years old and worked in the Majos I garment factory. Because I was an orphan, with no home, I lived in the dormitory of the factory. Neither of us was a mem- ber of the Communist Party, but we were obliged to join the DISZ (Communist Youth Movement). My cousin, who was a good swimmer, had a slightly priv- ileged position in it. "We both fought actively with arms in the insurrection against the Russians. In Austria we lived in a refugee camp until the summer of 1957 and we planned to immigrate to Australia. Because the immigration was con- stantly postponed, we vent to work to support ourselves. Loos received a job at a chicken farm near Vienna, I myself in Burgenland. Because of lack of sufficient money, we were unable to visit each other, but we were in correspondence 'with each other. "In October 1957, the tone of his letters changed. He spoke about unexpected difficulties; he had psychological problems; moreover his mother had called him home. In November, I received a special delivery letter, asking me to come to Vienna urgently. He told me that a man had contacted Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 WHAT HAPPENS TO REFUGEES WHO GO HOME him: who seemed to be a man of "good will" and had offered him a loan (4,500 Schillings) to enable him to buy a bicycle and some clothing. The man had given him two years to repay the money. Now he was.threatening him with black- mail. He would -ftmel Loos' obligation if the latter returned to Hungary, because in that case, it would be considered as his reward. On the other handl his mother urgel him to return: saying that his stepfather would lose his job if he failed to do so. He had to make up his mind in two days. uUnder this pressure, he decided on repatriation. He had hardly passed the frontier when he was arrested, despite his amnesty papers. He is now in an unknown prison. During the sixteen months which have passed since that time, his mother has received only one brief postcard posted from an unknown place." 1146 PART III RESET11.EMENT "'What is it you would like to have most in life?' asked the reporter. "TA key,/ replied the refugee, 'a key to a door behind which I could have some privacy for me and my family, a place I could really make my home.'" Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ? from a United Nations broadcast originating at Canp Hadjiki ri akion. Greece Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Ii Hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, provided by the free peoples of-the world for relief and reconstruction In Korea, helped In the resettlement of the more than two and a half million persons who fled from Communist con- trol in North Korea. Here a refugee farm family pulls weeds in the IKOK Village Seed Bed Projeet. Many obstacles had to be overcome before shoemaker Alexander Demenko, who was born in Ostroschez, Russia, could be resettled in his new shop In the outskirts of Salzburg, Austria. The resettlement of nearly one million Vietnamese who In 1954 fled from the Communist Korth to the Republic of (South) Vietnam is one of the most remarkable of all refugee stories. Here at Xuan-Kinh, in the free south, more than 1,000 refugee fishermen (part of an entire village which was Ir mith by the parish priest) launch their new fleet of 143 boats. 'at BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM By Mark Piros PART I One of the twentieth century's major sociological achievements, although frequently overshadowed by the drama of individual escapes, has been the resettlement of millions of refugees from communism in the years since the end of World War II. Governments, organizations and private citizens throughout the free world have joined in a vast, cooperative effort to find new homes for some twelve million of these men, women and children. Countless families already have become adjusted to life in their adopted homelands. A ma- jority of the refugee millions have been resettled. The over-all exodus from Communist countries has been so over- whelming, however, that a number of unresolved problems still exist. In 1959, for example, a permanent solution was yet to be found for some 145,000 persons remaining in "first asylum" countries such as Austria, West Germany, Italy and Greece. Concern was also expressed for approx- imately one million Chinese refugees crowded into Hong Kong. A country-by-country survey reveals the scope of the post-war refugee flow -- and the efforts which have been made to meet the challenges it has created. 1119 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM Soviet East Germany has Yost more citizens by flight than any other Communist-ruled country.' More than 3,500,000 East Germans have fled to the free German Federal Republic since 1945. In West Berlin, where most of the East Germans cross, the refugee is officially "recognized" and accepted if he can prove that his life would have been in danger if he had stayed in the Soviet Zone, that he wants to join a family member in West Germany, or that there is a job waiting for him. If he is not "recognized" he can remain in West Germany -- he is never compelled to return to the Soviet Zone -- but he does not get official assistance in resettling. Many refugees go directly to friends or relatives without seeking governmental aid. Ten percent of the "recognized" refugees from the Soviet Zone may remain in West Berlin, if they wish. The rest are flown out to West Germany, given residence permits, permission to work (sometimes a pension), the right to vote, and assistance in finding housing. The German Federal Republic has assimilated most of the post- World War II refugees from the Soviet Zone with comparatively little trouble -- today job openings in West Germany exceed the number of un- employed persons. The refugees, in turn, have contributed to making West Germany the prosperous state it is. In addition to the refugees who have come directly from the Soviet Zone of Germany since the also received and sheltered more occupied areas, plus almost nine end of World War II, West Germany has than 200,000 escapees from other Soviet- million ethnic Germans who have been displaced from their homes for various reasons. 15o --- L 1.?,11411-04t4*.' ? BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM Today an estimated one-th1y.4 of Hong Kong's 3,000,000 population are refugees from Communist China. The city is dotted with thousands of . huts of all descriptions, all crowded with people. Every room, every corridor, every landing and staircase, every corner where al bed can fit is occupied. For half a million of these refugees "home" is just a bed- space in a room corner, under a dark staircase or on a roof top. Thousands sleep in the streets. The main burden of caring for this large group of refugees from communism is born by the Government of Hong Kong at a current annual cost of over $40,000,000. A number of private agencies provide emergency help. In addition to the one million refugees from Communist China in Hong Kong, thousands have gone on to the Portuguese colony of Macao (150,000 to 200,000), to Burma (100,0n0 to 150,000), and to Laos (about 30,000). Some 2,000,000 refugees from Communist China in the last fourteen years have gone to Formosa; perhaps 100,000 or less have ultimately reached Japan, other parts of Southeast Asia, the United States, Brazil and Europe. Still in Communist China are some 9,000 European "refugees" -- for the most part White Russians who fled from the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution in Russia. They are waiting for exit permits and for opportunities to migrate overseas. One of the bright spots in the entire refugee picture has been the resettlement of 1.8 million Koreans who fled south after a Soviet- controlled North Korean regime was formed above the 38th parallel in May 1948. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 4' A 3.51 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Cop Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM Since June of 1950, hundreds of millions of dollars in aid has * been made available by the free peoples of various countries for relief, reconstruction, and the resettlement of refugees, in Korea. Altogether, 49 nations, more than 60 non-governmental organizations, and untold numbers of individuals joined in contributing tremendous amounts of food, medical supplies, equipment and clothing to aid the Korean victims of Communist aggression. In November 1952 the United Nations Korean Reconstruction Agency began the extensive relief program which had been voted by the UN General Assembly. It imported $14 million worth of consumer goods, mostly food, to be distributed by the ROK government. It allocated $70 million for industry, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, mining, education, housing, medical facilities, and welfare services. By the end of 1956 the UNKRA program had contributed a total of $140 million to Korea and its refugees. Slowly, industries long idle began to stir, and consumer goods began to flow again. With. equipment and technical assistance furnished under UNKRA's Community Development Program, villagers and refugees built roads, sewers and irrigation systems, dams, dikes and canals, bridges, orphanages, schools, churches, and hospitals. Another heartening milestone in the resettlement of refugees from communism was the help provided for one million Vietnamese who fled from the Communist-controlled north to the free south, when Vietnam was partitioned in July 1954. 152 IP BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM The difficulties of caring for the refugees who arrived in free South Vietnan by sea and air at the rate of six to seven thousand each day were tremendous. Problems of this mass movement fell upon a country already exhausted and disorganized by war. But the new government of President Ngo Dinh Dion strove desperately to provide the refugee with food, water and temporary shelter until permanent settlements could be established. Gradually everyone arriving from the north was sorted out and established in new homes. Skilled workers, such as blacksmiths, shoe- makers, weavers and the like, were reestablished wherever their trades were most beneficial to themselves and to the community. Others were trained in such trades as ceramics and brickmaking. Fishermen were settled along the coast, and farmers began to work throughout the countryside of South Vietnan. Some farmers resumed the wet rice cultivation they knew best; others took up dry farming in the highlands. Still others settled in forest areas to cut timber for new homes, eventually establishing farms on the land they had cleared. Some 350 new villages soon appeared in the free Republic of Viet Nam. These villages are of three types: farming, fishing and artisan. The smaller villages house from one to three thousand people, the larger ones from five to seven thousand. Many of these "new" village societies actually were moved virtually intact from the north, with the same mayor and village elders, and the same Buddhist bonze, Catholic priest or Protestant pastor. As often as not, the refugee villagers' first act was to build a church. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Cop Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 ? CIA-RDP81 01043R0041001400n7.n -.P.i4Wstt 153 .1 _ Declassified in Part - Sanitized Cop Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM One of the best-known Vietnamese areas to be repopulated largely by refugees was the Cai San Project southeast of Saigon between the town of Cantho along the Mekong River and Rachgia on the Gulf of Siam. In this area of 400,000 acres, abandoned during the war, same sixteen new villages were developed to house approximately 100,000 persons. Seventeen new canals totalling 320 miles in length were dug. The cultivation of rice and other crops, plus the raising of fish between harvests, has provided an important contribution to the South Vietnamese economy. Another dramatic chapter in the story of Vietnam's refugees was "Operation Brotherhood." Organized by the Philippine Junior Chaaber of Commerce, in October 1954, this project sent a medical aid team to help the Vietnamese refugees from communism. Following the Philippine example, other teams came from Formosa, Thailand, Malaya and Japan. Other organi- zations around the world sent contributions of money and medical equipment. 154 BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM By Mark Piros ? :?tr?-?'.1 ''!VirAPP:r.?" 44 ? "TAI;q5.40- PART II The free world's reaction to the plight of the 200,000 Hungarians .who fled after Soviet force crushed Hungary's 1956 freedom uprising was instantaneous. In less than six months, 142,000 Hungarian refugees had been granted permanent asylum in 35 countries, and by mid-1959 less than" 11,000 of the 200,000 remained in Austria. Within days after the Hungarian refugee flow began, in early November 1956, free world government selection missions and voluntary' agencies were operating in Austria. Inspired and coordinated by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, processing began at once, red tape was cut, and in a matter of days the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration had begun its impressive operation of moving refugees to new homes. Switzerland, France and West Germany sent trains to the frontier to pick up refugees as they arrived from Hungary -- with- out any attempt at pre-selection. The countries which took large numbers of Hungarian refugees included Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, France, the German Federal Republic, 1, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Cop Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 ? CIA-RDP81 01043R0041001400n7_n Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM Great Britain, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the Union of South Africa, the United States, and Venezuela. The newest refugees from communism -- th( Tibetan escapees of 1959 -- are gradually being settled in India. At Dalhousie, in North India, a Tibetan religious center is being established. Other refugees have been sent to the protectorates of Sikkim and Bhutan. Both areas are short of labor and are expected eventually to provide havens for a large proportion of the refugees. The Tibetans sent there will work on roads and on other public projects and become artisans of various kinds. The leaders of Sikkim have shown much interest in the new arrivals. Donations made to the Institute of Tibetology will provide posts for Tibetan scholars and make possible the preservation of the Tibetan Buddhist culture being exterminated in Tibet by the Chinese Communists. Persons associated with Tibetan relief work believe the number of those escaping may eventually reach 20,000. Free world officials have been greatly encouraged by the recent acceptance by many countries of so-called "hard-to-resettle" refugees, of whom there are an estimated 50,000 still in Europe alone. Represented in this "difficult-to-resettle" category are a variety of national groups, including many individuals who are ill or of advanced age. Those in Europe include Czechoslovaks, Hungarians, Balts, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Albanians, and a number of minority nationalities from the USSR. Many of these people escaped from behind the Iron Curtain after World War II but, 156 BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM for one reason or another, have not been able to migrate overseas or to integrate locally. Some are disabled, old, or ill. Others are members of families with many children -- the so-called "uneconomic families." Refugee annals contain many tragic stories. Some family units, all of whose members but one were eligible for emigration, have remained together rather than leave behind a loved one suffering from some physical or mental disability. While some countries have been unable to accept certain ill or disabled refugees, Belgium, France, West Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand have over the past several years opened their doors to a substantial number of the handicapped, including active tubercular cases and those requiring institutional care. Norway has taken some 450 old and tubercular refugees, and 41 blind persons, all with their family members. Sweden has accepted more than 700 refugees suffering from active TB, along with approximately 600 of their dependents. Another 300 refugees who could not find ordinary employment because of age or disability were taken on as special workers by the Swedish State Archives. Belgium has been particularly active in welcoming handicapped refugees. All told, some 800 difficult cases, either institutional or semi-institutional, have found new homes in that country. Another 1,000 of the hard-to-resettle refugees have been helped by the organization "Aid to Displaced Persons" eotablished by the Belgian priest, Father Georges Pire, who received the 1958 Nobel Prize for his Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 157 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 BUILDING A NEW LIFE: THE RESETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEES FROM COMMUNISM humanitarian work. He has established a series of European villages (in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Norway) whose populations are recruited ;exclusively from the ranks of the "hard-core" cases, with primary emphasis on large families. Father Fire has also sponsored the "adoption" of some 15,000 refugee families by people throughout Europe. New Zealand recently granted visas to the largest single contin- gent of handicapped refugee families accepted for resettlement by any non- European country. Twenty families, each with at least one handicapped member, have already sailed to new homes in New Zealand. .Many resettlement problems remain, however. The flow of refugees from Communist-ruled countries shows few signs of abating. The difficulties faced by refugees in crossing the "Iron Curtain" and establishing them- selves in free countries are not becoming less. The flow of refugees into Western Europe alone continues to average more than half a million a year. Meanwhile, the successful resettlement of more than 90 percent of those who have already fled serves as a beacon of encouragement to new refugees and those who seek to help them. Working ceaselessly, the govern- ments and individuals of the free world are providing more than homes for the homeless; they are helping to restore each refugee's sense of personal dignity. Most important of all, they are giving hope to millions who once were disillusioned. 158 r-4 THE RESETTLEMENT OF A HUNGARIAN UNIVERSITY IN CANADA: PART I By George S. Allen Dean, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, Canada (One of the more dramatic phases of the escape of some 200,000 Hungarians to the free world, following Soviet suppression of the freedom uprising in November 1956, was the group flight of the entire Forestry School of Hungary's Sopron University. The University, a 150-year- old school specializing in forestry, geology, mining, and geodetics, had a proud tradition: in 1848, its faculty and students fought with the Hungarian patriot Louis Kossuth in the Hungarian War of Independence, which also was suppressed when Russian troops were called in. A century later, when Hungary and the university again fell under Russian control, courses in the Russian language and Marxism and Leninism were introduced. In October- 1956, students at Sopron--as did university students throughout Hungary?rose up against their op- pressors. They destroyed Russian monuments, hauled down Soviet flags. Realizing that after this neither the students nor the school had any future in Hungary, on a November morning in 1956, without wasting timo to pack anything but a few clothes, the group of 300--more than half the entire university enrollment--fled to Austria, five miles from Sopron. This is an account of the university's progress in the free world.) On March 19, 19592 the Forestry faculty of the ancient Hungarian Uni- versity of Sopron celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding. The occasion was one of great significance. Sopron dates back to the beginning of forestry Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 159 sob Declassified in Part - Sanitized Cop Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THI3RESLPTTLMENT OF A HUNGARIAN UNIVERSITY IN CANADA: PART I as a science, and is one of the oldest professional schools in the world. Even more significant, its 150th anniversary was celebrated, not in Hungary, but on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Canada. Never before in history has a university left its homeland to migrate 10,000 miles to settle in a strange land among a strange people. By May 1959, 97 of the students had been graduated from the Sopron Forestry Faculty in Canada (28 in 1958, and 69 in 1959). Another 50 will graduate in 1960 and 1961, and Sopron will then have completed the task it set out to do when it left Austria in December 1956, for Vancouver, B. C., Canada. The migration began in November 1956, when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, and shortly covered all of Hungary. As Assistant Dean L. Adamovich, of the Sopron faculty, said: "Al]. of our students and faculty members were in the revolution against the Russians, of course." With tens of thousands of other Hungarians who had fought and prayed for freedom, the students and staff of Sopron and their dependents fled across the mist-shrouded border into nearby Austria. The picture of an entire university fleeing from its homeland and held together by its dean presented a challenge that Canada's representative on the scene could not ignore. Since Canada was short of trained foresters, and since the university wanted to migrate as a unit, the Honorable Jack Pickersgill, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, in Vienna to study the plight of the refugees, took up the cause with the Canadian Government. After 160 ? THE RESETTLEMENT OF A HUNGARIAN UNIVERSITY IN CANADA: PART I appropriate consultations, it was decided to invite the entire group to come to Canada's West Coast, become a part of the University of British Columbia, and take up where they left off in Sopron. The University of British Columbia, at Vancouver, was enthusiastic about receiving the group, but its facilities were already strained by the booming growth of the province. Therefore, that first year, a construction camp of a large Canadian newsprint producer, recently vacated, was offered to the Sopron Forestry School. It was located 80 miles north of Vancouver, at Powell River, a paper mill city on the jagged coast of British Columbia. By early February the Hungarians were settled in the Powell River quarters. Their first decision was to run the camp themselves and do their own cooking. The Canadian Government paid for their food, and the company supplied heat, light, furniture, blackboards, and washing and sewing machines. The company barracks were divided into 22 classrooms, student and faculty lounges, and living quarters. Altogether, some 300 persons made the move: 28 teaching and supple- mentary staff, 21 faculty wives, 50 children, and 200 students, of whom 20 were young women. Of the students, a total of about 150 will graduate with a degree in forestry and several will graduate in other faculties; some 35 have dropped out for academic or financial reasons and may or may not return. Most of the young women have married. The two years passed on Canadian soil have not been easy ones for the students or the faculty. There was the sudden uprooting of an old Declassified in Part- Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R0041001400n7_n 161 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE RESETTLEMENT OF A HUNGARIAN UNIVERSITY IN CANADA: PART I educational institution, drawing students away from their families, and setting out for an unknown land. The most difficult hurdle was the language, and much effort has gone into the saving of this problem. At Powell River, classes were held all during the day for all members of the group, with lectures by university preessors,government and industry people on customs, culture, economics, and the history of the free world, with particular emphasis on Canada, their new home. Later, the University provided special classes in English under particularly well-qualified instructors. Progress in general has been good, although some have had more difficulty than others with the new language. One placewhere the language difficulties proved no obstacle was the soccer field. The Hungarians, professions at the game, quickly defeated every Canadian team in the neighborhood. A course on forestry and economics of the American West Coast, in contrast to European forestry, WAS added. The Powell River Company also set aside a 160-acre plot of young timber as a demonstration forest for the Hungarians. During the summer months, the students took to the woods with the provincial Forestry-Service, various companies in the industry, the Federal Science Services, and the national parks. regular wages. The Sopron Forestry School WAS moved from the Powell River Camp to the University campus for the 1957-1958 school year. By the time all the Hungarians have been graduated, the Sopron. Faculty also will have been For this, they were paid 162 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr THE RESETTLEMENT OF A HUNGARIAN UNIVERSITY IN CANADA: PART I assimilated into the U.B.C. Faculty of Forestry, other universities, industry, and government services across the country. It is gratifying to both the Sopron Faculty and the University that five graduates of 1958 and 1959 were awarded bursaries or studentships by the. National Research Council of Canada. Another won a graduate scholarship at Yale University and another at the University of Washington, in the United States. Several others are continuing their studies following graduation. As far as job opportunities are concerned, some of the Sopron grad- uates are not yet in technical occupations but are still doing semi-skilled work related to forestry and the forest industry. As their knowledge of the English language and local methods improves, however, they should be readily absorbed by government services or by private industry. The 1959 graduating class, numbering 69, will probably-have less difficulty finding technical employment. Their English is better, they had one more year of transition, and economic conditions have improved immeas- urably. Most have already-found work with the Forest Service or with industry and undoubtedly all will be placed during the next few months. There is little doubt now that the Sopron students have become an integral part of the student body of the University of British Columbia. The important thing is that in spite of real difficulties with language, finances, timetables, and overcrowding, and in spite of the strong pull of family ties, only students have felt compelled to return to Hungary. The remainder are staying, determined to become a part of this fresh new world in which freedom and the dignity of man are not only still valued but honored. 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 163 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Some of the Sopron students, led by Dean Roller, go out Into the forests of Canada to supplement their desk work. By May 1959, ninety-seven of the students had been graduated from the Sopron Forestry Faculty in Canada. Fifty will graduate in 1960 and 1961, and Sopron will then have completed the task it set out to do when it fled Hungary in December 1956. One of the more dramatic phases of the exodus of some 200,000 Hungarians after Soviet suppres- sion of the 1956 freedom uprising was the group flight of the entire Forestry School of Hungary's Sopron University. The school resettled in Canada, becoming a part of the Faculty of Forestry of the University of British Columbia. Here, left to right, are Dean Redman Roller of the Sopron Forestry Faculty, who led his students to freedom; George S. Allen, Dean of the U.B.C. Faculty of Forestry; John E. Liersch; and Philip W. Bird, a Canadian immigration official. The four are shown at a meeting in Abbotsford, British Columbia, on the arrival of the Sopron group in early 1957. ? e THE RESETTLEMENT OF A HUNGARIAN UNIVERSITY IN CANADA: PART II WHY WE FLED By Kalman Roller Dean of the Sopron Division, Faculty of Forestry University of British Columbia, Canada It is not an everyday occurrence when the students and staff of a university leave their own country to find a new home so they can preserve their ideal of freedom and live as free men. I believe I am not e......nceited when I say that our exodus shall be written on the pages of history to provide example and inspiration for generations to come. What can we learn from the example of Sopron University? First of all, this: ideas cannot be made acceptable through force; new social systems cannot be created by oppression. Only-the will of the people -- the free will of the people -- can create new social order. It was not the will of the Hungarian people that a communistic social system be adopted in our country; that system was forced upon us, and the end result was that we had to start out on the journey of the homeless. No one can evaluate what a tremendous failure this is from the point of view of the Soviet system. The conscience of nations will long remember those pages of Soviet- Hungarian history which Mr. Khrushchev can never explain satisfactorily to any intelligent man. 165 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 THE RESETTLEMENT OF A HUNGARIAN UNIVERSITY IN CANADA: PART II Canada's reception of these refugees, on the other hand, shall everlastingly remain a bright page in Canada's history. It is an immensely positive contribution to the whole of humanity when a nation gives new homes and hope to so many refugees. I am quite sure the entire free world regards this action of the Canadian people as an outstanding expression of humanitarianism and understanding. But our task is not yet over. We ask all people, even as we pledge ourselves, not to let the flame of freedom disappear. This is our common duty, because it is false to believe that any one country can remain free for any length of time while other countries are cruelly oppressed. We must explain to everybody-- workingmen, intellectuals, socialists and even communists -- that the imperialistic intentions of Bolshevism are only camouflaged as Socialism. In a small, destroyed country like our Hungary, nothing especially Hungarian happened. The revolution was not the outcome of fiery Hungarian temperament. It was a fight for the freedom of humanity and especially for the freedom of the working class. No sacrifice is too great for the sake of freedom and the eventual victory of man's conscience. As I saw it, to leave the native land, the beloved old home, parents, sisters and brothers, and the respected profession, to try to help the helpless at home, and to work in the interest of the whole free world that was not too great a sacrifice. Those of us who are now living in Canada want to help our country and our school by finishing the job begun at Sopron and completing the training of our students in their free land. Some of these may some day return to their 166 ? THE RESETTLEMENT OF A HUMARIAN UNIVERSITY IN CANADA: PART II native country and serve it by rejuvenating the old ideals and adding to them those gained in the fresh and wholesome younger civilization of this great country. Those who become citizens of Canada, and there will be many of these, will contribute in an important way by sinking their Sopron roots deeply into their new country and placing their strength and resources at its disposal. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 167 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 5 -Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 The Reverend Dominique Georges Henri Pire, a Roman Catholic Priest at the Dominican Monastery of La Sarte in Huy, Belgium, was awarded the 1958 Nobel Peace Prize for the work he has done in helping to resettle thousands of refugees. His organization, Aid to Displaced Persons, has particularly aided those refugees In the "difficult- to-resettle" category. Here Father Pire holds a small refugee child at the European Refugee Village at Bregenz, Austrirt. FATHER PIRE: NOBEL PRIZEWINNER FOR REFUGEE WORK Construction engineer Vladyslav Cichon, 58, and his wife are two of the many refugees who have found homes and a new life in villages founded by Father Pire. Originally from Poland, in 1943 the whole family was taken to Nazi Germany to work as slave laborers. After the war they spent many years in overcrowded refugee camps, and prospects for their future were discouraging, particularly since Mr. Cichon had tuberculosis. Today they live in a European refugee village at Aachen, Germany. Their oldest son works, and two daughters are being educated in England. By Anne Burns (Miss Burns met the 1958 Nobel Peace Prizewinner during a recent stay in Belgium) A Belgian priest who until recent months was virtually unknown out- side of his native country F2S awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1958 for the work he has done in behalf of thousands of refugees. He is the Reverend Dominique Georges Henri Pire, a Roman Catholic priest at the Dominican Monastery of La Sarte in Huy, Belgium, and the founder of the organization, Aid to Displaced Persons. Through this organization, Father Pire has worked in humble anonym- ity to aid the residue of refugees -- the so-called "hard-to-resettle" persons who can neither emigrate nor return to their homelands. He has worked for the human integration of thousands of persons through refugee villages, homes for the aged, and individual sponsorships. On December 10, 1958, the Nobel Prize Committee presented Father Pire the award for peace: "To him who will have worked the hardest to bring abbut a spirit of fraternity among peoples." When asked about his award, the 46-year-old Dominican said that the Nobel Prize Committee had understood well the lesson of love in awarding the Peace Prize to "one who is unknown." Father Pire added "my plan was born more than ten years ago to help the refugees. The scheme is set -- villages, homes for the aged, parrainage, (godfathering) -- but the dream is elastic. It can go on and on. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 V FATHER PIRE: NOBEL PRIZEWINNER FOR REFUGEE WORK "Theregre two aspects to my dream. To help the refugees now; to get them out of the attics and the gutters, and to show them they can hope again. "My second aim is to unite us all through love. That is the 'Europe of the Heart' that extends beyond national boundaries. We are every man's brother and we must be united through love, through compassion for the man - who is in need. Love is the most important thing on earth, and the farther c I go in life the more I see how little people love each other." Father Pire explained that Aid to Displaced Persons is international and non-denominational. No questions are asked when a refugee arrives. What he needs is "a roof, some work, a free country to live in, and his homeland to dream about. The refugee may be in rags, he may be a drunkard, perhaps not the best example of the country from which he has fled, but he is a human being with infinite value." Homes for the aged, of which there are now four in Belgium repre- sented Father Pire's first effort toward helping the refugees. After listening to a talk by a young U. S. Army officer, Colonel Edward Squadrille, who had directeda displaced persons camp for the United Nations Relief and Rehabili- tation Administration in Austria, Father Pire asked how he could help. This resulted in his founding homes for aged refugees. There are twenty persons in each home, usually older married couples who live within the privacy of their own room with their own possessions about them. Father Pire also began the parrainage, a form of sponsorship by which persons correspond with a refugee and come to know him. If money is sent, it ' -.1',flo; 11, 0 is. :1 I:? ?4 ., Z141'.7 LZ 170 FATHER FIRE: NOBEL PRIZEWINNER FOR REFUGEE WORK is because the correspondent knows his friend needs shoes, or his son needs a coat for school. Today the parrainage plan includes thousands of correspondents. The Nobel Prizewinner also founded refugee villages in Germany, Austria and Belgium. In Norway, ground has been broken for the sixth of these villages. It will be called the Anne Frank village, after the teen-ager who with her family hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic, and later died in the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. In these villages the refugees form their own communities, work if they able, and participate in the life of the community in which they reside. . There are usually twenty homes to a village -- new houses built with the skilled, donated labor of those in the community. Each home is for a single family. Large families have priority, as well as widows with children, the disabled and others of the "hard-to-resettle" refugees. There are 50,000 of these difficult-to-resettle cases among the 175,000 European refugees who are still waiting resettlement. Father Fire cautions, however, that the work must go slowly. "I am only one man; I have only one life. This work cannot be accomplished with a sweep of the hand. There is no love in that. I can build only village at a time. I must try to build it better than the last, better in so many ways. In a recent speech, Father Pire succinctly summed up the credo of Aid to Displaced Persons: "Each one of us can place himself before the refugees. For instance, suppose that I am a selfish man and I meet 200,000 persons who lack the essentials of life. It will prompt me to be less selfish. But from Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 171 ' Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 FATHER PIRE: NOBEL PRIZEWINNER FOR REFUGEE WORK the point of view of society, the message of the suffering displaced persons is clear. Their misery has been there, staring at us for fourteen years, so that working together we must remedy it. Thus their misery serves to unite us." A barrier to this work, said Father Pire, is the barrier that men build to keep each other out of the circle of human kindness, which admits only those of a like kind. "I have no hidden, mysterious mandate from a church or a country," he says. "I am bound by no borders. I belong to no political party. I am simply pro-human." When honored by the Belgian Government, after he had received the Nobel Prize, Father Pire said: "To answer suffering with material help is nothing. To help to emigrate, to shelter, feed even a stranger, someone uprooted -- that is to say, someone who is sick above all within -- all this is useless if there is no love. "The exercise of love for those who suffer will make us discover, between them and ourselves, and between all who united to help them, ties which join us all together, which represent our common denominator. I have called this union the 'Europe of the Heart'. Nothing should prevent others from creating the 'Asia of the Heart', the 'Africa of the Heart', the Americai of the Heart', and one day, let us hope, the 'World of the Heart'." In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Father Pire, Dr. Gunnar Jahn, president of the Nobel Prize Committee, summed up the opinion of the committee when he said: 172 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release FATHER PIRE: NOBEL PRIZEWINNER FOR REFUGEE WORK "If the importance of the work undertaken by the Reverend Father Pire must be estimated in terms of the number of refugees whom he has saved, some will perhaps say that the sum total of his labors is not very great. But, as is so often the case, it is not necessary to deliver judgment by using solely statistics as a basis. What counts is the spirit which has animated the work of Father Pire; that which he has sown in the hearts of nen and which, let us hope, the future will bring to bear in the form of disinterested work in favor of our fellowmen plunged in misery." Father Pire is once again in Huy, at the Dominican Monastery of La Sarte, where he has lived since 1926, and where he was on retreat when he learned of his award. He is completing plans for the Anne Frank Village, and giving conferences on sociology and philosophy when he has time, all within the framework of his life as a Dominican priest. He also has been awarded the French Legion of Honor and the Belgian War Cross for his work in the underground during World War II. 50-Yr 2014/04/03 ? CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 173 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 SUCCESS IN THE FREE WORLD: HUNGARIAN GENERAL BECOMES TEACHER Major General Bela Kiraly, who in October 1956 commanded Budapest freedom fighters in their valiant but unsuccessful revolt against Hungary's Communist regime, is now planning to become a teacher. In June 1959 he received a Master of Arts degree from ColunOia University in New York City. Now forty-seven years old, General Kiraly was the only high-ranking officer to escape from Hungary after Soviet suppression of the revolt. He is shown holding a plague "To honor Hungarian newspapermen and writers who kept the torch of freedom burning during the darkest days of Communist oppression, who gave their lives in the national Hungarian uprising of 1956 and suffered for their belief, proving that freedom of expression and a free press are the only guarantees of freedom for the individual and nation." The plague was dedicated on December 9, 1958 by the American Newspaper Guild, the Association of American Editorial Cartoon- ists, the Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University, the International Federation of Free Journalists, the Newspaper Guild of New York, the Overseas Press Club of America, and the P.E.N. Club Center for Writers in Exile. By Fred Brewer (Mr. Brewer is Assistant to the Director of the News Office of Columbia University, New York City) A tall, greying man in his early forties, shabbily dressed in a guard's castoff uniform that did not fit, walked through the gates of a prison into a shadowy back street of his native city. Five years imprison- ment, four of which had been under threat of execution, had made him sick, pale and thin. He paused to look at the towering gray walls that had en- closed him, wondering why he had been released, for the governments's charges against him were serious -- saboteur, conspirator, spy. Now he had freedom of a sort -- six months' parole. Re looked down the street, briefly bewildered by which way to go. At last, he cross- ed and walked past yellow-plastered buildings toward the city's west bank. He hoped he might find some old friends who probably by now thought him dead. It was September 5, 1956. He was Bela Kalman Kiraly, ex-major general of his nation's army. With his fingers he tried to press out a few of the wrinkles in the old uniform as he slowly walked into the intellectual and artistic heart of Budapest, Hungary... On June 2, 1959 General Kiraly, now forty-six years old, was among 6,591 men and women who were graduated from Columbia University in New York City. He received a master of arts degree from the Graduate Faculties. To Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 ? CIA RDP8-1 01043 04 ni a Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ? SUCCESS IN THE FREE WORLD: HUNGARIAN GENERAL BECOMES TEACHER i, it , ,*43.!,- 175is,an,especially high honor for it will mark a major step toward a - -\f'rtiNt__-?--.' . ,. : ? : ,' career he Most earnestly wants -- teaching. But teaching also will be a major reverse from his previous profession -- the military. And the class- roam in which he someday hopes to lecture will inno way resemble the stark and.dmoking,streets of Budapest Where he commanded Hungary's Freedom Fighters in Octobdiand7earlovd-heit?Of-1956.'11Whei the-people of his land fought 0 Soviet tanks with-cobblesEones and diving Soviet aircreft with hunting rifles. *-r;e1a.47:Gineral Kiraly was a.professional Soldier who joined the Communist ? Party-tin Hungairafter.World War II. Herose:to the rank of Major General amt-betamer!commandei-of the general staff college of the Hungarian Army. In 1951 helms thioWn'Anto-prison for opposing political pressures on the military forces and_was*expelled-from the Party. Five years later he was released, just ieVen,weeks before the beginning of the freedom uprising. Turingithe revolution he was in command of the Budapest sector of the.Hungarian Revolutionary Forces. On November-10, after Soviet troops had completed theirsuppression of the revolt, he fled hid Communist homeland the Only-ttop officer to escape from Hungary. - "Before I teach," General Kiraly said recently, "I wish to obtain doOtor of philosophy degree in history at Columbia. To receive it, it is only necessary that I take my oral examination and write a,dissertation." , General Kiraly has n?political aspirations relative to Hungary, nor , has2he any family,there. He-is now a permanent resident of the United States, anCintends.to become a citizen when; in 1962, his five-year resident requirement is ended and he is eligible for naturalization. 176 No Arto? Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? - - . ji ?? 4 SUCCESS IN THE FREE WORLD: ?HUNGARIAN GENERAL BECOMES TEACHER "I would, of course, help crush Communism wherever I could," he said, "but to return to Hungary now...it would mean my death. It is in the American youth Where my future lies. I have great confidence in the boys and girls of this country, and I would like to devote the rest of my life to them." Since he became a student at Columbia, General Kiraly has been given several leaves from his classroom work to talk to American youth. In March 1959, for example, he took an extensive tour of the midwestern, southern and southwestern parts of the United States, lecturing to school and college audiences. "I presented three different lectures," he said, "I talked about the recent Hungarian revolution as the first major blow against Soviet Communism, the inherent weaknesses of Russian strength, and the Hungarian church which is the thorn in Russia's heel." A series of similar lectures in 1957 first impressed him with the desire to teach. "When I came to the United States, my English was bad. Friends, *however, persuaded me to give lectures, and I was invited to colleges and universities. American schools, I found, were excellent, and among the faculty and student body I discovered a superb moral spirit." He recalled how,durir.v his years under Communist rule in Hungary, Russian propaganda portrayed America, its peoples and its institutions as 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 177 . :47" Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 SUCCESS IN THE FREI WORLD: HUNGARIAN GENERAL BECOMES TEACHER groups huddled in shadows. "Rut," he said, "no one ever believed Russian propaganda -- it is very poor. And one only had to look around in Hungary to see that the Communists lied. Their inhumaneness could not -- and cannot -- be glossed over by propaganda." Since he has been in the United Stmtes, General Kiraly has been extremely busy. Not only has there been school work, but he is also engaged in numerous other tasks. He is executive co-chairman of the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation, which helps Hungarian refugees settle in free world countries. He is a member of a Hungarian group of seventeen persons with functions somewhat similar to a government-in-exile. He is vice-chairman of the political committee of the Assembly of Captive European Nations, a group whose aim is the liberation of Communist-dominated nations. He writes numerous articles, and addresses many groups. In June 1959 General Kiraly went to Geneva to attend ceremonies marking the execution in 1958 of Freedom Premier Imre Nagy and his Defense Minister, General Pal Maleter. At that time he said that Premier Nagy's 'capture by the Russians after he had been assured safe-conduct, and his execution, in 1958, despite repeated formal assurances that he and his associates would not be prosecuted, caused world-wide protests of unprecedented magnitude. Indeed, Imre Nagy and Pal Maleter are martyrs, and not to the Hungarian people alone. The Hungarian revolution as an important milestone in humanity's struggle for freedom; Imre Nagy and Pal Maleter have become symbols of that struggle." 178 '1' ? Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? - SUCCESS IN THE FREE WORLD: HUNGARIAN GENERAL BECOMES TEACHER "I must tell others about the inhumanity of the Communists," he explains. "It would be a tragedy for the free world if the youth of that world would only find out about their inhumaneness by experiencing it in their own countries. /t is the duty of youth to find out how cruel Communists are, and I must help." ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 79 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 ' r 401. A BUILDING IN DARKNESS By Stanley J.C. Wright Special Assistant to the United Natiohs High Commissioner for Refugees From United Nations Review A refugee camp on the Greek island of Tinos, in the Aegean Sea, was once home for 130 escapees from Communist Rumania. Today those refugees have all been resettled with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Among those who have found new lives is lonis Rimbald, who works on a steamer and lives in Pyraeus, Greece. Captain Karajanes never surrendered hope during his years as a refugee on Tinos. He walked the harbor, studied the boats at anchor, and dis- cussed their merits with other sailors. Finally, refugee officials were able to register his papers in Greece, and today he is the proud master of the tanker SS PTOLEMEUS. Tinos Refugee Camp, on a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, was formally closed in December 1957. For five years it had been the temporary home of 130 refugees from Communist Rumania. The final resettlement of these refugees was made possible with Nobel Peace Prize money awarded to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Here K. Tsitidis, a representative of the Ministry of Welfare, formally closes the door of the camp after the last refugee had departed. Today Tinos is truly "a building in darkness." Reprinted by permission In 1955: when I visited the Greek island of Tinos for the first time, I was warned that the refugee camp there was one of the most depressing in Europe. Not that conditions of life were worse than in many other such places, but being on an island made the refugees feel completely cut off from life -- like exiles, to use the expression of the Representative in Greece of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Already when the ship pulled into the harbor I saw small groups of people waiting on the pier. They were some of the refugees who had come to greet the Representative. As soon as we landed, they approached us and started asking questions about the possibilities of their being able to leave. They walked with us toward the hotel and in an unhurried and quiet way listened to the explanations. The following morning I tad the opportunity to learn more about the individual problems of the families. Practically all oftbe 130 refugees most of them Greeks from Rumania -- wanted to resettle overseas. Everyone Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 !"'"`" Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release A BUILDING IN DARKNESS spoke of a visa as something expected within the next week or so. Manz/ showed letters from voluntary agencies, from consulates, from friends over- seas. But the optimism. WS forced and unnatural; underneath there was always an undertone of anxiety and uncertainty. It was clear that at heart all were obsessed by the fear that the world had forgotten them. In fact no one had a positive notion of when he might leave. Lacking the money to pay for the sea trip to Athens, the refugees did not even have the satiAfaction of being able to visit the consulates personally to follow up their cases but had to rely entirely on social workers from voluntary agencies and the High Commissioner's Office. Meanwhile, on their island of exile the present was a life of in- activity, as Tinos could offer almost no work. There was the adman who made some money selling peanuts and chocolates to the tourists and to the pilgrims who came in thousands every year to pray at the miraculous Icon of the Holy Virgin, which is kept in the beautiful Church of St. Mary's on the hill over- looking the small town of Tinos; there was a middle-aged man working as a waiter in a small restaurant; the young sailor who occasionally helped unload the small ships putting into harbor, and the barber who walked the length and breadth of the island to earn a few drachmae with which to buy a little extra food for his son. Some of the women crocheted all day to make small tray cloths which they sold in the street. Food was a major problem with all of them. Their diet was composed of bread, onion soup, vegetables, olives and coffee. Clothes posed another problem; so did money for cigarettes and the little amenities of life. 182 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 tt. 1 ? ? 50-Yr A BUILDING IN DARKNESS Not surprisingly, I came away from Tinos deeply depressed, for at that time there was in fact very little immediate prospect of the refugees there being resettled. It was not that good will was lacking. Far from it. But there was so much uncertainty about immigration programa that no one -- even in authority -- could estimate the real prospects for the refugees. As for local resettlement, funds at our disposition were already stretched to the limit to cover other urgent phases of the program, which had only begun that same year, financed by the United Nations Refugee Fund. Then in November 1955 we learned that the Office had. been awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Peace. The late High Commissioner, Dr. J. G. van lieuven Goedhart, decided that the prize money., amounting to some $35,000, should be applied to the completion of one specific undertaking and invited each of his representatives,. in 11 different countries, to submit a project. The one finally selected, with the unanimous consent of the staff, was the closure of Camp Tinos. Shortly afterwards, a full-time social worker was assigned to the camp. The goal was to find a permanent solution for every refugee so that the camp could. be closed without tl-eTe having to be a single transfer to another camp. This meant a careful examination of resettlement opportunities and an. earnest search for alternative possibilities for those who would have to remain in Greece. It meant, in addition, a close cooperation between the social worker and the refugee, for, in every case, it was essential that the refugee himself should freely take his own decision regarding his future. This was not always easy, particularly in cases where emigration proved impossible and the refugees nevertheless refused to consider any other solution. However, as time passed 1-? 183 2014/04/03 : CIA-RDP81-01043R00410n14?7_n 'Ts A BUILDING IN DARKNESS Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 and the camp began to empty, even those who still tenaciously clung to their hope for a future overseas began to accept the inevitable. Even with the Nobel Prize money, more funds were needed to finish the job, but fortunately the Norwegian Refugee Council and Swiss Aid to Europe came forward with $10,000 each to rake up the difference. On December 15: 1957, I was again invited by the Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Greece to visit Tinos. This time it was to witness the official closing of the camp, just two years after the award of the Nobel Prize that had made it possible. As we landed and. walked toward our hotel, our guide pointed to a building in darkness stand- ing there beside the harbor. "There it is," he said, "empty but for the luggage of one refugee who left for Athens a few days ago." Mr. James M. Read, the Deputy High Commissioner, referred to this incident the following day when he pronounced the camp officially closed. He said:; "When I arrived last night, I was struck by two things: on the house where we were staying I noticed two flags flying, the Greek flag and the flag of the United Nations. This was a deeply moving gesture on the part of our host which went to the hearts of all of us who work with the Organization. The other was a building in darkness. Now, we usually associate darkness with a feeling of despair, despondency, even death. Light we associate with encour- agement, hope and life. But the darkness of this building filled me with joy: for here was a dream come true. Two years ago we started the attempt to close one refugee camp; today we have succeeded in doing so." 184 4.) Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 414 II a!?. -1* A BUILDING, IN DARKNESS "At the same time," he noted, "we are fulfilling our promise to Dr. van Heuven Goedhart and showing that one can get rid of what he called "those black spots on the face of Europe." Camp Tinos has been closed and all the refugees have been returned to an active life. The barber now has his own shop in Athens; the olds= selling peanuts has his little house in Tinos; the waiter is working in Salonika; the sailor has been resettled overseas. Most of the old people have moved into a beautiful, well-run home that has been built in cooperation with the World Council of Churches and the Church Foundation of St. Mary's of Tinos. True, there are still a few eases where *t is not yet possible to write the word "closed" over the file. One man, his wife are living in Athens, but their two sons are in America and have suffered from the separation. A young man and his sister find themselves unable to adapt themselves to a normal life again; a grain merchant is not sure whether he will be able to make a living out of his little business, which he has started with a loan from the Nobel Peace Prize money. When the lock was turned to close the camp forever, one of the former refugees, now resettled in a home on Tinos, spoke: "Nobody who has not been refugee for years," he said, "nobody who has not suffered from the uncertainty -we have felt for so long, can understand the depth of my feeling when I say 'thank you' to all who have made this moment possible." Tinos the camp exists no more. An empty building is all that remains ()fit. 7' ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R1)U1nni 4nnn7_n 4 - 185 'AL ? Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0 A BUILDING IN DARKNESS Dr. August R. Lindt, successor to Dr. van Heuven Goedhart, received authorization from the United Nations General Assembly during its last session to collect funds to begin an intensified effort to close all the camps in Europe by the end of 1.960. This year alone (1958) it is hoped that 59 camps in Austria and Germany will be shut forever and theie 13,000 occupants resettled. Progress will depend to a large extent on the availability of funds; some $7,500,000, taking into account money already received or pledged, is still needed to close the rest. Tinos is a dream come true, a case of particular interest because of the difficulty of the problem and the fact that the means to solve it mater- ialized "out of the blue" in the form of the Nobel Prize. But its larger significance lies not so much in its singularity but in the fact that it forms part of a pattern of international scope and that it is an example of what can be achieved in an all-out campaign ' , solve one of the great human afflications of our time. 186 This article appeared in the February 1958 issue of United Nations Review, published monthly by the Office of Public Information at U.N. Headquarters. All material in the Review maybe freely reprinted, but acknowledgement is requested, together with a copy of the publication contain- ing the reprint. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release ? 50-Yr 2014/04/03: CIA-RDP81-01043R004100140007-0