THE IRON CURTAIN: Across the Border

Day dreams of escape spark men’s hearts the world over. Wherever discontent and fear and fancied oppression lurk—and that in some measure is always everywhere—men yearn to escape and are stopped by the ugly question: Where? For those behind the world’s iron curtains, the urge is stronger. Their fears are seldom without foundation and their path of escape is clear: it lies just over the border.

Last week, on one day alone, a total of 21 Iron Curtain refugees made the desperate dash to freedom. They came from various levels and followed divergent paths. One was a teen-age girl, a refugee from child-labor gangs in Hungary’s Communist coal mines. One—Yugoslav airline Chief Pilot Milivoje Arsenijevic—had left a good job and a comfortable apartment in Belgrade. Some were driven by despair, some by disillusion, some by disgust. Some merely saw a chance and grabbed it. All had a goal in common. They gave it no name, but it lay just across the border.