CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Defections

Last week, as every week, brought a flow of refugees from Stalin’s satellites to the free West.

¶ On to the U.S. Army airstrip near Coburg, Germany, descended a Fieseler-Storch helicopter, and out stepped two young men in work clothes, followed by two well-dressed young women. In excellent English they explained that they had refused to join the Czech Communist Party and wanted refuge. The two men had worked for the Schiidlings-bekamp-fungsinstitut (Institute for Fighting Vermin), spraying plants with DDT from the copter. Instead of finishing their DDT run, they simply headed west. One of the girls had also worked for the institute, the other was just a friend. No romances, they said.

¶ Into West Berlin on the subway came Karel Douba, 32, who claims to be the ping-pong champ of northern Czechoslovakia, and his blonde girl friend. They told how they had crossed the Czech border by carrying a basket of mushrooms and posing as pickers. In the Soviet zone of Germany they thumbed a ride, found that the driver who slowed down to pick them up was a Red policeman. He took them to Berlin without question. Douba said he recently finished serving a year’s jail term imposed when a Communist agent heard him joking in a restaurant about Czech sportsmen who had escaped to the West.