Ethnic Germans From Soviet Union, Poland Grab Chance to Leave

FRIEDLAND, West Germany--Every day, by bus, train and car, ethnic Germans from Poland and the Soviet Union arrive expectantly at this reception center two miles from the East German border.

The newcomers are more than welcome, and the liberalized emigration policies of Warsaw and Moscow have crowded the center to a point far beyond the intended capacity of its neat buff and white buildings.

Nevertheless, the men, women and children are somehow housed and fed and processed, given personal documents and sent off to various parts of West Germany for resettlement.

15,000 From Soviet Union

“Last year we had nearly 15,000 incomers from the Soviet Union, compared to only 700 the year before, and another 44,000 from Poland,” the center’s director, Mathias Marquardt, told a recent visitor.

“We used to have a capacity of 800 persons. Now we have 1,200 beds, but we currently have 1,800 people. Some sleep on mattresses on the floor. They stay anywhere from three days to two weeks. You can see the problem.”

No one knows exactly what led to the increase in the number of ethnic German emigres, but camp officials attribute it to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost , or openness.

“People in the Soviet Union see the opportunity to leave,” Marquardt said, “and they are taking it. They tell their family and friends: ‘Grab the chance while you can.’ ”

Similarly, Poland has eased its strictures on ethnic Germans who wish to return to the German-speaking homeland.

Although most Germans from Poland were officially permitted to depart, some arrivals have only vacation permits. Upon arriving in West Germany they headed straight for Friedland with whatever they managed to bring out with them.

One Grandparent Enough

The West German government recognizes as admissible all ethnic Germans east of the Iron Curtain. Evidence of one German grandparent is enough to obtain an official entry permit.

The West German government has set up other camps to deal with refugees from East Germany. A center near Nuremberg deals with refugees from Romania and other East Bloc countries. For non-German refugees seeking political asylum, there are other centers.

Friedland was built by British occupation forces in 1945-46. Because it was near the juncture of the U.S., British and Soviet occupation zones, it served as a transit camp for hundreds of thousands of refugees in the immediate postwar years.

In many cases, ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union trace their families back to the 18th Century, when the Russian Empress Catherine the Great encouraged German immigration. These are the Volga Germans, so-called because they were settled on the lower Volga.

With the start of World War II, most of the Volga Germans were uprooted and forcibly resettled to the east, many of them in Kazakhstan.

Russian Required

Today there are believed to be about 2 million ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union, about half of them in Kazakhstan. Their children are required to speak Russian at school, but the mother tongue is often retained at home. About 80,000 ethnic Germans, according to West German officials, have asked the Soviet authorities for permission to emigrate.

Ethnic Germans at the center here say they wanted to leave the Soviet Union to be reunited with members of their family who preceded them, not because they wished to protest against the Soviet regime.

A woman named Lydia, 32, a petite, dark-haired mother of three--Elvira, Erica, and Christina--said that she and her husband, Ulmer, 31, applied to leave because they wanted to join her parents, who now live near Ulm in southern Germany.

Her parents, she said, applied on 10 separate occasions before being given permission to leave in 1967. She and her husband asked three times, she said.

“I just wanted my family to be reunited with my parents,” she said.

Her husband is an electrician and she is a seamstress, and they seem to have no fears about the future.

‘You Can Buy Everything’

“My first impression here?” she said in response to a question. “You can buy everything.”

Another woman, Caterina, who like Lydia and her family is from Karaganda, in Kazakhstan, said she too had applied for an exit permit to be reunited with her family.

She was met by a 28-year-old nephew, Kurt, who left the Soviet Union 10 years ago and now works for Volkswagen in Wolfsburg. “The main thing is to get our family together again,” Kurt said. “We have about 25 members here, and 25 still in the Soviet Union.”

Other ethnic Germans came from areas that once were ruled by Germans, mainly East Prussia and Silesia, which were conquered by Soviet forces in World War II and turned over to Poland.

These people do not refer to East Germany and West Germany in the modern sense. To them, East Germany is “Middle Germany.” Their “East Germany” is made up of the lands now ruled by Poland and the Soviet Union.

Families Freed

A family from Silesia is headed by Herbert, 47, an auto mechanic who, like the others, asked that his last name not be used. He said he was one of eight children who lived in what used to be called Gleiwitz and is now Gliwice. At the end of the war, the family was broken up, some remaining behind, some leaving for East Germany, and some managing to make it to West Germany.

“I came 2 1/2 years ago, on a visit to see my brother, and stayed illegally,” he admitted. “They punished my family for that by keeping them there, but now they have let them go. My wife, Maria, arrived yesterday with my son, Zbigniev, and daughter, Grazina. We were lucky. My sister had to wait eight years to get together with her family.”

The daughter, Grazina, 15, speaks only Polish, and like many of the ethnic Germans, will have to study the language before she can go to school or to work.

Speaking through her father, she said she is happy that the family is together, but sad at having to leave friends behind in Poland.

Herbert said he will take the family to the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, in southern West Germany, to find a home for the reunited family.

“The difference between the two places, in work habits, not just politics, is like night and day,” he said.

Quick Adjustment

Having polished up his German and obtained work--three different jobs, he said--he seems to have adjusted quickly to the new life. But Marquardt, the center director, is concerned that not all the newcomers will find it so easy.

“They will have the advantage of our government’s social net--unemployment, welfare, pension benefits,” he said. “But it is quite an adjustment to live in a free society, where families perhaps are not so close, and where you have to learn to do and decide many more things for yourself--simply because you have that freedom.”