Yes, when we spent summers by the Baltic Sea with relatives in the summers, Polish people often came over to buy up most of the toilet paper and beer, which annoyed my beer-drinking relatives. We were often told that the situation in other socialist countries was worse since they didn’t have West German relatives to send them stuff and “Intershop” stores where East Germans could buy West German good with the money they got from their relatives. My grandfather was a teacher, so they had to be very careful. He didn’t want her to go to church, but she insisted. I was very precise about my father’s experience. I can believe the the situation in Poland may have been different. I don’t quite understand your reference to the fighter pilot. After all, he didn’t try to escape. Half of my family did escape in 1961 while the other half stayed — for various reasons.