West Germans Eager to Hire New Arrivals

The refugees from Communist East Germany pitching their tents at this impromptu camp near the Danube River sense that the freewheeling, capitalistic society they have opted for might have some perils.

But few, it would appear, expected that their very first encounters would be with headhunters.

For West German headhunters--Western jargon for employment solicitors--have descended on the camp in Vilshofen and the others around Passau in Bavaria, offering jobs to the newcomers, with apartments included.

“A young couple arrived here yesterday morning,” remarked camp director Friedrich-Wilhelm Moog as he made his rounds Tuesday. “I introduced them to a local hotel owner, and he hired them, with living quarters. So they had a job, home and were serving guests by evening.”

The two bulletin boards in the 800-bed tent camp are cluttered with the tacked-up blandishments of prospective employers.

There is one from a butcher in Munich, another from a plastics company with offices in five cities, calls for physiotherapists, people who can work with the aged, carpenters, bricklayers, stone masons, mechanics, construction workers, technicians of various sorts.

And many of the refugees are qualified to respond. Most are young and skilled craftsmen.

“I think most of them have pretty good qualifications, even if they haven’t been trained in the latest techniques,” said Moog, who has been sending the newcomers out to more permanent locations at a rapid rate. “Some of the refugees can even pick and choose--doctors and nurses are in demand everywhere in West Germany.”

His view was echoed by one of the headhunters, Elisabeth Simon, the head nurse of the university hospital in Ulm in southern Germany.

“I am looking for 10 nurses for our hospital,” she said during a break between questioning newcomers. “We already have five nurses from East Germany, and they are very professional. It is good for our West German nurses to see how well the others do. I would sign up any I can find on the spot, with apartment included.”

On Tuesday morning, Simon’s prospects were only so-so, however. “I found one nurse from Magdeburg,” she said, “but she already had plans to go to Cologne.”

Nonetheless, the nursing headhunter had found a 23-year-old nurse named Brigitte who was still thinking over the offer--though the newcomer said she was inclined to accept a similar offer from a hospital in Augsburg.

“My boyfriend, who came with me, is a bricklayer,” Brigitte said, “and he would like to live closer to Munich, though I don’t think we could afford to live in Munich itself.”

Brigitte said she and her 25-year-old boyfriend had already given much thought to where they would work and live in West Germany. And their departure is reflective of the quality of worker that East Germany is losing during the refugee exodus.

Filling the Void

Also, Brigitte’s story is emblematic of the consequent gain to West Germany--for, Moog points out, the newcomers are filling the void in the demographic gap here and will help pay taxes supporting the elderly in the future.

Brigitte said she spent three years in nursing school in Brandenburg and was working in a home for the elderly in East Berlin.

“I love my parents, and I had a good childhood,” she said. “I don’t have any bad memories. The older people are satisfied in East Germany. They have a house, a car, maybe a weekend cottage. But the young people want to move around, to be free, to travel. I had a good job and a three-room apartment.

“It’s hard to say exactly what I disliked. But it was the (Communist) party people always putting you down. The government acts afraid. They don’t understand the hopes of the young people in the country.”

Has No Regrets

So Brigitte left a good job and her family for the West--and, as yet, she has no regrets.

“I asked my sister to come,” she recalled, “and she wanted to, but her husband wished to stay. She was happy that I got out. Her only fear was that I might be caught and sent back to East Berlin. I really have no fears now about the future here.”

Another refugee, Bertram, is a 28-year-old roofer who fled with his wife and child and his brother’s family, a total of six.

Busily filling out his documents, he said: “The main thing I didn’t like was that the government was always saying something that you couldn’t believe. When we were growing up, they always said that the Western European countries were our enemy, that the Soviets were good and the Americans bad.

‘More Propaganda’

“But my father warned me not to believe all the propaganda, and as I got older I could make up my own mind. I served in the army for a couple of years and didn’t like that--more propaganda. I came to believe that someone in the East is not much different than someone in the West. I’m a roofer. He’s a roofer. What’s the difference? Only politicians believe there’s a difference.”

He hopes to get a job in his trade and has asked to go to Stuttgart, the thriving capital of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.

A typical young mother in the process of moving from East to West is 23-year-old Ulla, with a 2-year-old baby in a carriage.

She worked in an electronics factory, while her 30-year-old husband was a house painter.

“Part of the reason we crossed the border,” she said, “was so that my daughter could grow up and get the education she wanted. We didn’t want her to be told what to do by the government. We wanted her to have her own personality.”

Straight From Vacation

She added: “We were a group of four families. Three wanted to leave, and one wanted to stay. We had been applying to leave legally for three years, with no success. So, when we were coming back from vacation in Romania and heard on Radio Free Europe that the border was open, we suddenly decided to come here.

“I am looking forward to having an apartment with a washing machine,” Ulla said. “That we never had in East Germany.”

Indeed, the youth and vitality of the newcomers is evident in the camps in Bavaria--Moog estimates the average age of his charges at 27, not counting children.

One gray-haired gentleman surveying the bulletin board was approached and asked if he was perhaps an older refugee.

“Oh, no, I’m here trying to hire a landscape gardener,” replied the aging headhunter.

COMMUNIST DEMAND East Germany urged Hungary to curb the exodus. Page 8.