Stanford Student Letters and Memoirs

May 20, 1960

Hello folks,

Goodness- George has been to Berlin and returned and even taken another excursion- and here I am, late again. Perhaps by now you are used to this routine. At any rate, as I wrote to him only last night, he just got to see Berlin in time with that Mr. K acting up. And, frankly, I shall be very happy to greet him on June 11th in San Francisco. Somehow we will prefer to have him on this side of the "pond" and he seems to be counting the days too.

April 28th, 1960

I have a few minutes before going to the Berlin Philharmonic so will start a letter to you.

We have spent both morning and afternoon in seeing the refugee situation. We began this morning at the main reception center here in west Berlin, where the refugees come first of all after crossing the border into east Berlin and then crossing again into west Berlin.

First of all we had a very informative lecture from the director of the center, himself a refugee in 1951. Some statistics he gave were well worth repeating: Since world war 2 there have been 3.4 million refugees from east Germany, not counting those from other lands such as Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland etc. Germany has a present popultion of about 54 million; of these, 13 million are refugees from somewhere behind the iron curtain- i.e. 25% of the whole population! That is a lot of people to absorb especially when three foirths had another language, customs, etc, and of, course, none of them could bring more than a suitcase or so with them, many of them not even that much, so it was also quite an economic problem and still is.

Even more interesting are the more current figures; for example, the monthly refugee flow so far this year: January 5,300; Feb. 5,900; March, 8,000; April to the 26th, 14,000. One reason for the rise since Feb. is that the Communists have put on a big push to collectivize the farms and also the handworkers etc who remain self-employed. This has, as the numbers show, driven thousands of farmers to make the very dangerous trip to Berlin to escape to the west, where they must now face the difficulty and hardship and uncertainty of starting life from scratch. The no. of farmers jumped from 200 in Jan. to 2,400 in the first three weeks of April, after the new laws came in. The phychological [psychological] importance of west Berlin as an escape valve for refugees from Communism cannot be exaggerated!

After the backgroung [background] speech we split up into groups of ten to sit in on the actual interviews given to all new refugees. These people must show good reason for having left the Communist country in order to be granted refugee status in west Germany (this preventing infiltration and also preventing the complete flooding of west Germany with refugees to house, clothe, and feed) and hence they are questioned by a committee of three former refugees to verify these reasons. We got to listen to four cases, were permitted to ask questions when we didn't understand something- this was, I thin [think], the most informative experience of the day, giving a unique insight into how Communism goes about its slow but relentless job of taking over the lives of the common people in service of the state.

-2-

Each side is stating a pratial [partial] truth and creating harmful misunderstanding in a tense, cold-war atmosphere.

Where then do we observe the dangers of Communism, if not in their abuse of international propaganda issues or their "reign of terror" over the people? It seems to me that their threat is even greater because it is subtler. The danger as I see it, lies in the integration of all activities under a central government authority. We saw this in the refugee interviews, as the State passed little, ordinary laws which graduslly [gradually] bring the economy to full socialization and central control, so that decisions on production on price are made according to national policy goals, rather than the demand of the consumers. In the sphere of personal action, the restrictions are just as subtle and unspectacular- the right of the police to take people off subways and demand to see their identification cards (to catch refugees or smugglers), the little signs in the stores and cafes which require showing your identity card before purchasing, the development of "sport clubs" etc so that more and more of the individual's time is spent in activity guided by the state. In the sphere of information and propaganda, it is the same story. On the main streets of East B. are permanent loud speakers (about every 100 yards at least on top of lamp posts) through which the people may be contacted and influenced at will without their own consent (they cannot even "turn off the radio"). In book stores we saw more; there were obvious propaganda books, on the virtues of Socialism, the progress of Sovier [Soviet] culture and science, militarism in West Germany etc. Shelf after shelf of such stuff. But more ominous is the presence of distortion and lie in seemingly innocent books on world geography, history, children's stories etc. There is no way for people to suspect this sort of distortion and they can only grow up believing it. Furthermore, I doubt that any central figure guides the publishing of all such lies- rather they are sort of passed on from author to author, from newspapers to books, in a vicious circle of ignorance breeding more ignorance.

As I realized the subtle, gradula manner in which the Communist system extends its authority over its citizens- passing minor laws, raising taxes etc.- I began to draw associations to our situation in the USA. For the Communists (in east germany at least) hold secrret [secret] ballot elections, have a national legislature, as we do. And we too have recently (over the last 60-70 years really) experienced increasing power and authority in our central gov't iver [over] more and more areas in our activities as human beings. There are really similarites in the two situations- east and west- and they may cause us to ask "Can this happen to us in the United States, too?". We see that freedom is just as effectively diminished through undramatic, steadywhittling as through great sweeping wars and revolutions. But it si [is] just as important to observe the differences between US and East Germany for it is on some of these differences that we can build the defenses of freedom for the individual. Ideologically, we out the welfare of the individual on top, over that of the state, and we don't overlook the individual to protect the "class", i. e. worked or farmer. We still count people one at a time, not by groups alone. Our legislature continues (at least to some degree) to represent the will of the people, or of the majority at least in most cases. Because it doesn't try to represent all of them at once- rather each representative jealously defends the particular interests of his constituents. Out of the competition of such factions, we form laws which generally do justice to more people than could a panel of planners trying to cinsider [consider] everything at once. It is then exactly when we disagree and fight for our own interests that

May 20, 1960

Hello folks,

Goodness- George has been to Berlin and returned and even taken another excursion- and here I am, late again. Perhaps by now you are used to this routine. At any rate, as I wrote to him only last night, he just got to see Berlin in time with that Mr. K acting up. And frankly, I shall be very happy to greet him on June 11th in San Francisco. Somehow we will prefer to have him on this side of the "pond" and he seems to be counting the days too.

April 28th, 1960

I have a few minutes before going to the Berlin Philharmonic so will start a letter to you.

We have spent both morning and afternoon in seeing the refugee situation. We began this morning at the main reception center here in west Berlin, where the refugees come first of all after crossing the border into east Berlin and then crossing again into west Berlin.

First of all we had a very informative lecture from the director of the center, himself a refugee in 1951. Some statistics he gave were well worth repeating: Since world war 2 there have been 3.4 million refugees from east Germany, not counting those from other lands such as Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, etc. Germany has a present popultaion of about 54 million; of these, 13 million are refugees from somewhere behind the iron curtain- i.e. 25% of the whole population! That is a lot of people to absorb especially when three foirths had another language, customs etc, and of, course, none of them could bring more than a suitcase or so with them, many of them not even that much, so it was also quite an economic problem and still is.

Even more interesting are the more current figures: for example, the monthly refugee flow so far this year: January 5,300; Feb. 5,900; March, 8,000; April to the 26th, 14,000. One reason for the rise since Feb. is that the Communists have put on a big push to collectivize the farms and also the handworkers etc who remain self-employed. This has, as the numbers show, driven thousands of farmers to make the very dangerous trip to Berlin to escape to the west, where they must now face the difficulty and hardship and uncertainty of starting life from scratch. The no. of farmers jumped from 200 in Jan. to 2,400 in the first three weeks of April, after the new laws came in. The phychological importance of west Berlin as an escape valve for refugees from Communism cannot be exaggerated!

After the background speech we split up into groups of ten to sit in on the actual interviews given to all new refugees. These people must show good reason for having left the Communist country in order to be granted refugee status in west Germany (this preventing infiltration and also preventing the complete flooding of west Germany with refugees to house, clothe, and feed) and hence they are questioned by a committee of three former refugees to verify these reasons. We got to listen to four cases, were permitted to ask questions when we didn't understand something- this was, I thin, the most informative experience of the day, giving a unique insight into how Communism goes about its slow but relentless job of taking over the lives of the common people in service of the state.

Dearest Annie and Folks

28.4 5:30 pm I have a few free minutes now before going out for the evening - this time to a concert of the Berlin Philarmonic - so I'll begin a letter to you, finish it late tonight or tomorrow morning as I have time.

We have spent both morning and afternoon in seeing the refugee situation. We began this morning at the main reception center here in West Berlin, where the refugees come first of all after crossing the border into East Berlin and then crossing again into West Berlin. A sketch might make the various geographical terms [clear?]

[sketch]

First of all we had a very informative lecture from the director of the center, himself a refugeein 1951. Some statistics he gave were well worth repeating. Since WWII there have been 3.4 million refugees from East Germany, not counting those from other lands such as Latvia, etc, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, etc. Germany has a present population of about 54 million; of these 13 million are refugees from somewhere behind the Iron Curtain - i.e. 25% of the whole population! That's a lot of people to absorb, especially when 3/4 of them had another language, customs, etc. and of course none of them could bring more than a suitcase or so with them, many of them not even that much, so it was also quite an economic problem (and still is too!). Even more interesting are the more current figures - for example the monthly refugee flow so far this year: Jan. - 5300 Feb. - 5900 Mar. - 8000 Apr. (to 4/26 only) - 14000.

Over the Easter holidays they had over 1000 every day!! One reason for the rise since February is that the communists have put on a big push to collectivize the the farms, and also the hand workers, etc who remain self employed. This has as the numbers show, driven thousands of farmers to make the very dangerous trip to Berlin to escape to the West, where they must now face the difficulty and hardship and uncertainty of starting life from scratch. The numbers of farmers jumped from 200 in January to 2400 in the first 3 weeks of April, after the new laws came in. The psychological importance of West Berlin as an escape valve for refugees from communism cannot be exaggerated!

After the background speech we split up into groups of 10 to sit in on the actual interviews given to all new refugees. These people must show good reasons for having left the communist country in order to be granted refugee status in West Germany (thus preventing infiltration, and also preventing the complete flooding of West Germany with refugees to house, clothe, feed), and hence they are questioned by a committee of 3 former refugees to verify these reasons. We got to listen to four cases, were permitted to aks questions when we didn't understand something - this was I think the most informative experience of the day, giving a unique insight into how communism goes about its slow but relentless job of taking over the lives of the common people in service of the state.

continued 4/30

The first case was a man and his grown daughter; the family had been