From the S&S archives: Marienfelde, three months after the Wall

THE LONG CORRIDOR is silent and empty except for three people huddled at one end.

Two young men doze fitfully in one of the large waiting rooms; the others are vacant.

A cherub-cheeked baby, the only one in a large nursery, sleeps blissfully in a corner crib.

A little girl peeks out from under the blankets of her cot in a dormitory that seems enormous because of its emptiness. She sleeps near the door so she won't feel so lonely.

Chairs are piled on tables and mattresses are rolled up and tucked into corners.

This is Marienfelde, the West Berlin refugee center, three months after the Communists put a barbed wire noose around East Berlin, strangling the refugee flight.

Less than 50 persons a day reach the refugee camp now: Three months ago, before the wall went up, Marienfelde took in as many as 4,000 refugees daily.

But the "concrete curtain," the armed police (ordered to shoot to kill) and the ugly "death strip" along the border make escape extremely difficult. Only the bold, willing to risk any danger, or the ingenious, who trick their way through the remaining border crossings, make it to West Berlin.

The sudden surge of refugees during the summer indicated that East Germans suspected something drastic was about to take place.

From January to March of this year 46,367 refugees were processed at the camp. During April to June, 56,792 went through. In July and August, 92,669 fled to freedom with 36,800- recorded in the first two weeks of August alone.

Headlines and clippings from back issues of newspapers tell the story.

July 17: "Refugee Tide Into West Berlin Near 1,200 Daily."

July 18: "4,000 Flee East Berlin Over Weekend."

July 28: "Reds Mass to Bar Refugee Flight;" with the report that for the first time the Communists were using units of the 110,000-man People's Army to support .regular police units in curbing the flow of refugees.

Continually a source of embarrassment to his regime, East German Communist boss Walter Ulbricht sought to put an end to the freedom flow.

On Aug. 11, a headline read: "East Germans Call Parliament to Stop Refugee Flow."

The Reds scheduled meetings to publicize messages which they claimed were coming from all kinds of people calling for strong measures against "trade in human beings." The story stated that the Communists often put up this kind of "spontaneous demand" as a prelude to action.

On the same day, a feature story topped with a headline quoting an East German refugee read: "We May. Not Be Able to Get Through Soon:"

An Aug. 12 headline stated: "Refugees Fleeing at Record Pace Despite East German Clampdown." The story reported that during the week a record 12,448 fled.

But on Aug. 13 the wall started going up and the refugee total went down.

Despite the "strong measures," however, the Communists cannot erase a statistic that makes a mockery of their talk of "Socialistic paradise" — since 1945, 4 million persons have fled that "paradise" for a new life in the West.

Though the number of refugees has been reduced to a trickle, an official said the Marienfelde camp would remain open "to remind people in the East that we are still ready to receive them."

"But only a few families come over now," .he said. "They are mostly youths and single men who can make the daring escapes."

Of the wall he commented: "It is truly named, the `Wall of Shame'. The wall is an expression of the inability to run a regime as Ulbricht tells these people. He broke the last basic foundation when he broke the family by separating wife from husband, children from parents."