Swimming to Germany
MORAN, MICHAEL
FROM GUBIN TO GUBEN Swimming to Cermany BY MICHAEL MORAN GUBIN The man in the lead, Lordan, turned and pressed a finger to his lips, signaling us to be silent. Photographer Christian Faatz and...
...Before setting out, we asked Lordan why he didn't simply make the crossing himself and slip into Berlin...
...2 for two months, along with several Romanians, a Yugoslav, a Kenyan, and a Nigerian...
...But he was picked up as he arrived and was sent back to Poland...
...Right-wing violence against Polish tourists, gypsies, Vietnamese, and Africans entering Germany legally has brought protests from the Polishgov-ernment over what it sees as a lack of vigilance on the part of German police...
...Using the breast stroke to avoid making much noise, we were able to reach the opposite side in a few minutes...
...Many then disappear into the underground job markets of Berlin, Hamburg or similar large German cities...
...Asked how many may have escaped detection, Popp declined to answer...
...You cannot take my picture in a situation like this...
...Lana is another Romanian we encountered who left home in search of employment...
...he said angrily...
...Lordan peered above the brush, then yanked us to the ground...
...We climbed up the bank and found ourselves in a railway yard behind a factory...
...Others deliberately get themselves picked up by the police so that they can apply for asylum...
...Inside each 10' by 30' box live eight Asyl-suchende awaiting the processing of their applications...
...The most telling symbol of Germany's inability to cope with the situation may be the 40 shipping containers parked on Munich's Oktober fest fairgrounds...
...To our surprise, we met no one between the river and the center of town, where we had left our car...
...In Romania, there are no jobs now...
...It ultimately took 20 DM (about $ 13) to persuade him we were worth the risk...
...In addition, ethnic Germans whose families lived in Romania, Russia and Kazakhstan for centuries have been returning at the rate of about 20,000 a month...
...Soldaten," he whispered in Romanian-accented German...
...The demand for their services has intensified as stories have circulated about refugees drowning because they crossed at the wrong point...
...I do what I want...
...Smugglers of people from Czechoslovakia to Germany are not interested in Bulgarians and Romanians," Pribyl noted...
...As their cases look increasingly futile, some will slip away and try to live in the country without documents...
...I hardly ever spend a night without a roof over my head," she said...
...They came via Czechoslovakia and had spent three days in freezing temperatures without food or water...
...It seems astounding, yet that was all it took to illegally enter Germany on a recent bright Sunday afternoon...
...He was wrong...
...On the Polish side, in Stubice, taxi driver Edmund Buka described the flood of refugees from every corner of Eastern Europe after the opening of the border last spring...
...The latter, he added, generally make their attempts unassisted and compose the largest segment of those who are foiled...
...In mid-March, a group of German teenagers broke into an asylum shelter in the eastern port city of Rostock and bludgeoned an 18 -year-old Romanian to death...
...The police appear powerless, and occasionally downright unwilling, to intervene...
...The Czech-based entrepreneurs primarily aid immigrants who are likely to pay in hard currency...
...It is not deep...
...I could probably even throw a stone to it...
...You must go now," Lordan implored, making a swimming motion with his arms...
...Onthe street, the response to the Asyl-suchende, as the asylum-seekers are called, has been much less civilized...
...The dingy container village is fenced in and patrolled by armed guards with dogs to deter attacks on the residents...
...No wonder increasing numbers of Eastern and Third World refugees are opting to brave the border patrols and smuggle themselves westward into Germany...
...Lordan's story is more typical...
...At a roadside rest stop in Poland not far from Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, a man who had removed the rolls of toilet paper was selling individual sheets at the door for small change...
...Occasionally, a girl disappears into one of the trucks, emerging a short time later with the price of her next meal...
...The opposition Social Democrats, whose votes are needed for the two-thirds majority required to amend the Constitution, have so far resisted any change...
...The whole influx has overwhelmed Bonn's bureaucrats, and long ago exhausted available refugee housing...
...Other networks bribe train crews and truck drivers to smuggle aliens through official checkpoints...
...In exchange for allowing the authorities to hold his passport, he is given 200 Deutsche marks (about $130) a week for food and clothes, and during the day he may come and go as he pleases...
...Kerne Bewegung"—don't move...
...From there she traveled north to Agorzelev, Leknica, and finally Gu-bin...
...Still I am happy for it...
...They are people with darker skin," he explained...
...They used to sleep all over the place," he said, "in the woods, outside the market, near the river...
...Then he told us about the guides for hire...
...He'll be back soon...
...I considered standing up with my hands in the air...
...Now they know better," he continued...
...She worked briefly in a food-processing plant near Pilzen, but lost the job because of staff cuts...
...For the right price, they will pilot small groups through the thick Bohemian forest that straddles the boundary with Germany...
...That's capitalism...
...The exploitation of refugees takes various unexpected forms...
...Since last April, when Germany began allowing most East Europeans to enter without visas, the site has become the flash point in relations between these two neighbors...
...Lana now lives off the truckers here, trading sex for money...
...Soon the governing coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats began pushing to curtail the liberal asylum policy...
...the ones who did not were returned to Poland...
...Expecting to be seized at any moment, Christian and I began walking as nonchalantly as is possible for two soaking wet men...
...According to Eduard Pribyl, deputy chief of the Czech border guards, these people-smuggling networks are becoming quite sophisticated...
...In December, Frankfurt-an-der-Oder Mayor Wolfgang Denda called on his townspeople to block the bridge in an effort to force Bonn into making improvements...
...Not surprisingly, when we subsequently met Lordan in Gubin he was suspicious of our asking him to help us sneak into Germany...
...Once inside, however, they often confront fear, hatred and violence from a large segment of native Germans, who view the growing rate of such immigration as a critical problem...
...In theory, this guarantees them at least 90 days of room and board while their request is evaluated...
...I have my dignity...
...One old woman, obviously a bit disturbed and believing me to be a fellow German, said: "These people will never work...
...It is not a nice place," he told me...
...Alongside the vehicles, prostitutes and black-market vendors make their pitches...
...Violence against refugees has become so routine that it is relegated to the back pages of German newspapers...
...We take care of one another...
...Through the reeds a Polish soldier came briefly into view, his baby face a sharp contrast to his well-oiled Kalash-nikov...
...Drivers from Turkey, Hungary, Poland, and Germany loiter outside their rigs, some drinking beer or playing cards...
...Those who could not cross legally turned to the lightly guarded river banks...
...only murders still rate front-page space...
...Because," he smiled, pointing to the note, "I make more money here...
...The line of tractor-trailers waiting to cross into Guben stretches for miles...
...In three or four steps we were up to our necks in cold water...
...But the Neisse ran in between...
...But Lordan was a professional, I figured, with a talent for self-preservation...
...a second has Scotch whiskey and vodka for sale...
...For all the rhetoric and venom generated by the immigration issue, it was apparent from our experience in Gubin that Germany is doing little to stop the determined refugee from entering his would-be promised land...
...Like Lordan, she would not give her surname...
...We held our breath, and he continued on, disappearing around a bend in the river...
...Sevki Unal, a 34-year-old refugee from Turkey's Kurdish region, has been an occupant of container No...
...She tried to enter Germany early in 1991, Lana told us, and was turned away at the Czech border...
...Over the years, waves of newcomers have generally followed wars in poor nations or decisions by their governments to crack down on dissidents...
...The bridge itself, a single-lane structure over the Oder, is so inadequate that trucks traveling this central route from Berlin to Warsaw regularly back up traffic for dozens of miles as searches and document checks are conducted...
...But he is prohibited from working...
...I thought...
...Only about 7 per cent of these people will eventually win the right to remain in Germany...
...This is not a zoo...
...We clearly did not look like his regular clientele, nor could we con-vincehim that we were journalists...
...The busiest official crossing on the Polish-German border is about 25 miles farther north, at Frankfurt-an-der-Oder...
...Meanwhile, the growing flow of desperate people has given rise to a thriving underground "travel" business along the 370-mile German frontier with Czechoslovakia and Poland...
...At least six people never made it, drowning in the Neisse or Oder rivers during their attempted crossings...
...These are good men...
...The resident from Kenya lunged at Christian Faatz as soon as he raised his camera...
...Germany's Interior Ministry says that in 1991 more than 256,000 people petitioned for asylum, including 40,000 Romanians, the largest single group...
...After the Gulf War he fled to Germany when violence escalated in his homeland...
...Here, I have freedom," he said...
...A 31-year-old from Craiova, in southern Romania, he set out for Germany a year ago with every intention of finding work there...
...This could never happen in Hitler's time...
...Ortwin Popp, chief of the border patrol at nearby Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, claims that more than 9,000 people—most of them Romanians, with a significant percentage of Bulgarians, Vietnamese and Filipinos—were caught entering Germany illegally from Poland last year...
...in practice, delays and appeals can cause even unsuccess ful cases to take a year or more to resolve...
...You try living in a cage like an animal...
...The police claimed the incident grew out of a fight in a bar the previous night, and that xenophobia was not a factor...
...The one-day demonstration brought promises of additional crossings, but changes are expected to take years...
...But when the borders of poverty-stricken Eastern Europe were suddenly sprung open, the flow of immigrants became constant...
...They go into the countryside, where the river is not so wide and there are even fewer soldiers...
...Somehow we had expected a bridge, or at least a raft...
...Michael Moran, a previous contributor, is a free-lance writer based in Munich and a news editor at Radio Free Europe...
...Many have already been waiting more than a year for a decision...
...One man offers packs of Western cigarettes...
...Clearly, the best course was to lie there motionless...
...About 1,500 of those apprehended at the border were savvy enough to apply for political asylum...
...Lordan told us of one network that anchored ropes just below water level in several spots, allowing refugees to simply pull themselves across the river...
...Photographer Christian Faatz and I were close behind him, crouched in the ragweed and scrub that line the Polish side of the Neisse River just south of Gu-bin, an official entry point into Germany...
...Germany's Constitution guarantees asylum to anyone suffering genuine persecution in his or her home country...
...Go where...
...Reports of foreigners being beaten by neo-Nazis prowling the German side have had the same effect...
...But there is little doubt that the vast majority of those who make the trek manage to cross the border unnoticed...
...Now we go," Lordan said...
...Earlier he had told us about safely shepherding many others across the narrow stretch of river that separates the destitute Polish town of Gubin from the relative prosperity of Guben on the German side...
...We could see Germany from our hiding place in the weeds...
...Already this year there are indications that the total will increase: Roughly 62,000 applications were filed in January and February alone...
...Germans leaving the nearby exhibition hall on a recent day eyed the structures curiously, like homeowners unhappy about the dilapidated state of a neigh-bor's house...
...In 20 minutes, the line does not move an inch...
...Fortunately, the current was easily navigated...
...Last February, in the course of inspecting a truck abandoned near Berlin's airport, German police discovered shipping crates containing 30 Filipinos...
...Guides are especially valuable on the more treacherous river border between Poland and Germany...
...He has been living hand-to-mouth ever since, and has no immediate plans to return home...
Vol. 75 • March 1992 • No. 4
