Escape from 'Socialist Paradise'

​Volume 3 - 1989
“Recently I visited East Germany and saw both sides of “the Wall.”
The “Berlin Wall” is concrete proof — should any further evidence be needed after Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Angola, Nicuragua and Afghanistan — of the nature of “Scientific Socialism”.

​​To prevent Germans in the Soviet Zone from fleeing to the Western Zone in Berlin, a 165 km wall has been constructed, with 289 concrete observation posts/machine-gun towers and 123 km of electric fencing, to separate communist East Germany from free West Berlin.

A further “death strip” stretching the 1 393 km of the border between East Germany and West Germany has been constructed with:
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• 724 observation posts/machine-gun towers,
• 1161 km of electrified fencing with acoustical/visual alarm systems.
• 54000 self-firing devices, and
• 190 km of mine fields.

Just between the time of the “Berlin Wall”, 13 August 1961 to 30 July 1983:

• 73 people were killed by the communists while attempting to escape over the “Berlin Wall”,
• 182 people were killed attempting to escape from East Germany across the border into West Germany,
• 60000 people were imprisoned for “preparation, assistance or complicity” in attempting to escape from East to West Germany (with sentences ranging from 16 months to life imprisonment. 4 500 are still in prison now),
• 191 559 escaped from East to West Germany,
• 38515 escaped by tunnels, by improvised air machines or hot-air balloon, hidden inside vehicles travelling from East to West Berlin.
• 2768 East German soldiers or officers on duty escaped to the West (including a colonel),
• 8000 refugees have been repatriated — forced back to East Germany.

Since the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1949, more than 3-million Germans (over 1/6th of the population) have “voted with their feet” by fleeing to the West. Half were under the age of 25 years.

Hundreds continue to escape from communism in East Germany every year.

The facts speak for themselves:
The fact that East Germany hosts and trains ANC and SWAPO terrorists tells us what kind of “liberation” they want for South Africa and South West Africa. The fact that thousands of East German military secret police “advisors” are helping prop up the unpopular tyrannies in Ethiopia, Angola and Mozambique also speaks eloquently of the nature of those regimes.
Democracy has never needed to build walls to keep its people in.

However, as I travelled around the “Workers Paradise” and “Socialist Utopia” which is East Germany (GDR), I could understand what prompts people to risk their lives to escape this giant prison camp that is called a “Democratic Republic”. It is enough just to witness the contrast between the vibrant freedom and economic progress of West Germany and the drabness and oppression of the Eastern police state.

The GDR is full of restrictions, caution, resigned hopelessness and fear. But you don’t need to witness the repressive system that denies freedom of thought, speech, association and religion to know that. You just need to note the testimony of tens of thousands risking their lives to flee across the border— between East and West — from slavery to freedom.

It must be the same kind of motivation that has prompted literally hundreds of thousands of Africans to flee from Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Angola to South Africa or South West Africa.