E. Germany Lets Thousands Leave for West

An estimated 5,000 refugees who had crowded the West German Embassy in Prague began leaving for the West late Friday after East Germany agreed to let them go.

Private cars and at least two tour buses carrying the emigres left the embassy Friday, an hour after West Germany announced the agreement with East Berlin. It was the third such exodus from the West German mission in Prague in six weeks.

The refugees, who had jammed the mission since Wednesday, shouted “Freedom! Freedom!” and flashed V-for-victory signs when West German diplomats said they could legally leave for the West by any means they like.

Scores of East Germans arriving fresh from their Communist homeland turned up at the embassy astonished and happy to discover they could already leave.

West German officials said many of the East Germans would depart on special trains that would begin leaving Prague’s Liben station this morning.

More than 12,000 East Germans had swarmed across the border into Czechoslovakia in the three days since their government lifted a month-old ban on travel to the country.

More than 2,000 East Germans flooded into the Prague mission on Friday alone, many voicing bitter disappointment with promises of reform from Egon Krenz, the new Communist leader at home. The overcrowding apparently forced the latest East German agreement to an exodus.

The arrangement announced Friday apparently allows the East Germans to go West without waiting for the cumbersome bureaucratic procedure of renouncing their East German citizenship through the East German Embassy in Prague.