Word: besenhausen
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...hills around Besenhausen on the border between East and West Germany were veiled in sunlit haze one afternoon last week. On the Soviet side of the crossing point, a tired horde of D.P.s moved forward as the barrier pole swung up. On the British side, British officers and customs controllers, German border guards, police, priests, nuns, nurses and refugee administration officials looked at the sad group facing them...
Every day, hundreds of refugees slip into West Germany illegally from the East, and officials take no notice of them. But the scene at Besenhausen was part of a bungled attempt to admit D.P.s to the West in an orderly way. "Operation Link" was what the British called their part of an Allied agreement to take from Poland 25,000 Germans who had relatives in West Germany. The names of those D.P.s approved by the Western powers had been duly listed, but thousands of others, not on the lists, had got exit permits or entry papers (Zuzugsgenehmigungen) from Polish...
...Need. At Besenhausen, German officials had received a list of 200 refugees ready for transfer from a Soviet zone camp at Heiligenstadt. Only 101 of the 200 were on the "Link" lists. Allied officials asked the East German authorities to send the 101 to the crossing point. But the Communists, for reasons of their own, sent nearly 300. Said a British official: "I'll take all that are on my list. That's all I can do. I'll send for another list to try to take care of the others...
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