BONN — More than 200,000 ethnic German refugees from Eastern Europe came to West Germany last year, the highest number since the formation of the country in 1949, an Interior Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.
A total of the 202,673 ethnic refugees were handled by transit camps and granted German citizenship. The majority of 140,226 were from Poland, with 47,572 from the Soviet Union, said Horst Waffenschmidt, parliamentary state secretary at the Foreign Ministry.
