600 More E. Germans Go West Amid Fears No More Will Be Allowed Out

More than 600 East Germans rolled into West Germany on Friday aboard what some worried would be the last freedom convoy.

Despite tightened borders, the flow of emigrants continued into Czechoslovakia and Poland, where more than 100 East Germans took refuge in the West German Embassies in Prague and Warsaw in hopes of following their countrymen West.

A train carrying 633 East German refugees arrived in Hanover after a 14-hour ride from Warsaw and across their Communist homeland.

In all, more than 47,000 East Germans have left their homeland through Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia since mid-September, when reformist Hungary sparked the exodus by opening its border to the West.

The new emigrants on the train from Warsaw said the exodus was having severe effects on their homeland.

“Things are really bad in East Germany,” said Lutz Kopecky, 29. “There are towns without bakers and shopkeepers, and they’re having trouble keeping supplies moving.”

Other refugees said Communist police, some with attack dogs, lined the route through East Germany and that some train stations were surrounded by barbed-wire fences.

Nonetheless, a number of Friday’s arrivals told of a young East German couple and their child who succeeding in getting onto the train just before it left Polish territory.

“The train doors were locked tight, but they were able to get in through a window,” one refugee said.

Some people told of receiving help from Poles in their efforts to join the exodus.