They came at an average rate of 4.000 a week. In July. the last full month before the wall went up. 30.000 fled to West Berlin alone. On the grey. showery day of August 12. 1961. the day before the wall went up. the line of refugees at Marienfeld contained 2.400 people. Of all those who escaped. about 50 percent were 25 years old or younger. having been only 9 years old when the East German puppet regime took over and began years of Communist indoctrination. The refugees included a high percentage of professional people. But most were workers fleeing the socalled "paradise of the workers." One Soviet official has complained that the equivalent of over a billion and a quarter dollars had been spent to train and indoctrinate those who went west. It is no wonder that Communist officials finally admitted failure and. in a desperate. brutal move. sought to cut off their captives from the rest of the world.
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refugees