To E. Germany’s Young, Freedom Is Worth Wait

The young people lounging around a hillside near the shores of Lake Balaton, largest in Central Europe, seem at first glance like vacationers savoring their holiday before heading home to the workaday world.

They are invariably young--teen-agers, parents with small children, hardly anyone over 30, strolling, sitting on blankets and taking sun baths, munching bratwurst washed down with beer.

But, unlike most vacationers, they are preoccupied, for they are all East Germans, staying at a youth camp here while seeking to make it to the West across the Austrian border legally--or illegally.

Most of them have turned their backs permanently on the past--on their homeland, families, friends and possessions.

“We arrived three days ago,” said a 23-year-old locksmith named Stephan from Karl Marx Stadt, formerly Chemnitz. “We’ll wait a couple of days more, and if it seems they are not going to evacuate us to the West, we’ll just have to try it on our own.”

Stephan drove to Zanka with two friends from home. In Budapest, they found that the two East German refugee camps in the capital were overflowing and this holiday camp for young East Germans was being made available.

Currently, according to camp official Wolford Sandor, the camp is already filled to its 2,000 capacity, making a total of about 6,000 East Germans here and in Budapest seeking emigration papers.

In fact, Stephan and his two friends, Ralf and Kurt, were not able to get into the camp proper. They are living in a cheap room in Zanka at their own expense, but they spend most of the day here, in case word to leave should suddenly come.

Refugees Stay Busy

They sit and talk, read three-day-old West German newspapers left by vacationers from the Federal Republic and pass along the latest rumors about whether the Hungarian government will allow evacuation through Austria to West Germany.

“We hope things will be resolved in a few days,” said camp official Sandor. “But that’s a matter for the authorities in Budapest. We are only trying to house and feed the people here.”

Lake Balaton has long been a choice tourism area, particularly for East Germans who have no major lakes of their own. Sailboats dot the water, bathing beaches abound and the gentle hillsides grow the vines that make tangy Hungarian wines.

But the East Germans are eager to leave Lake Balaton for the West and listen expectantly to reports that a mass evacuation is in the works, any day now.

They were disheartened to learn on Friday that the 116 East Germans who had crowded the West German mission in East Berlin had abandoned the building with only promises that they would be helped to emigrate.

Humanitarian Solution Sought

Hungarian authorities are seeking a humanitarian solution to the problem that would see the East Germans evacuated to the West without alienating the East German Communist leadership.

Railroad coaches and buses are standing by in Austria to transport any East Germans released across the frontier to prepared refugee camps in West Germany.

Hungary would like to accede to Bonn’s request that the East German refugees be allowed to depart but is afraid that letting all 6,000 out might cause a stampede by other East Germans vacationing here.

Each day, emigration-minded East Germans arrive, some drenched from crossing the Danube River along the Czechoslovakia-Hungary border. Others with Hungarian travel visas show up wearing sports clothes and carrying tennis rackets.

Each night, a couple of dozen East Germans slip across the haphazardly guarded frontier into Austria and freedom.

“We are just waiting day by day,” said Erika, a 24-year-old waitress from Leipzig. “We are afraid that if we try on our own and get caught, they may send us back to East Germany. We have heard there are more soldiers guarding the border now.”

Erika and her friend, Ursula, were dressed in shorts with halter tops, relaxing on a blanket with friends about their own age.

“It is lovely here,” said 18-year-old Ursula. “But we can’t really enjoy the surroundings, even though the sun today feels good. We don’t want to get too far away and miss the departure if it comes.”

All the refugees here sound the same theme: They have waited in vain for change in East Germany; they are not allowed to travel freely; they have not much choice in jobs; the shops are short on the things they want to buy; hard work and money in your pocket doesn’t mean much when there’s nothing on which to spend it.

“But the biggest problem is that we just don’t feel free there,” Erika said.

“My mother and father believe in the DDR (East Germany),” said Ralf, a 23-year-old mechanic. “But I don’t, and that’s why I’m leaving. The people who run the country have made it impossible for the young people. We lived with a big wall surrounding us.

“In a few days, if nothing happens here, we will drive our car as far as we can, leave it and start walking to see how far we get.”

And his friend Stephan added firmly: “If we can’t make it across the border one way, we will try another. The point is that we have decided we are never going back. Never.”