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LONDON
fERMAN FRONTIER
1939. I pick up my scatter-

ed belongings. Some have been’
flung into the train corridor and
have been trampled on by the
customs officials. “Jewish swine!”
they shout after me.
GERMAN FRONTIER
1951. The 23-year-old customs
official politely asks me for my
passport. He is thrilled to dis-
cover I speak fluent German, and
We start talking.

I ask him how many Jews there
-are in the German Democratic Re-
public. ‘‘I don’t know,” he re-,
plies. ‘We don’t register them or
make any distinction between dif-
ferent religions. So how should I

-know?”

These are two of my own
memories of Germany.

-I had been a little frightened of
what I might find, even after all
these years, in the country whose
‘S$overnment had killed my par-
‘ents and brother in the gas fur-
Naces of Auschwitz.

But I have come back convinc- -

ed that that sort of thing can
never happen again in the new
‘Germany.

I’ve walked all over, East Berlin,
stopping people whenever I felt

like talking to them, asking hun-

dreds of questions.

There was the little pub I dis-
covered in a bombed side street.
Its customers were talking about
the recent Third World’ Youth
Festival,

An elderly worker was saying .

enthusiastically that it meant

“Germany had at last found her

way back again into.the family

‘Of peace-loving nations.

Never again could there be a
War with Britain or the Soviet
Union for had not youngsters
from both countries walked arm-

‘in-arm with young Germans, talk-

ing of peace and friendship?

The others agreed,#@except a
little shopkeeper who muttered
darkly that that was all very
Well, but was it not a fact that
Shops were stuffed with goods
and that life had more freedom
in West Berlin?

“Well, why don’t you go and
live there?” the others countered
Promptly.

“Are prices
Steadily there?

“Are they building new flats

coming down

8nd open-air theatres and cine-

Be

Delegates to the recent World Youth Congress exchange views in East Berlin.‘

sy mvognondcm emg mse i000) 10

From Hifler's Third Reich, 1939

I went back

fo the German Democratic Republic, 1951

ie Te

mas from the rubble?”

The shopkeeper was silent but
he must have decided that he
preferred East Be lin after all,
for when I visited the pub a few
days later he was there again.

®
Of the People’s Police I met
I recall particularly one incident.
A tough 10-year-old had climbed
a rather rickety support round
a young tree to watch an open-
air display. F
A. young policeman walked up
to the tree, grinned at the boy
and just beckoned him to come
down, looking for all the world

- By INGE FRANK

EE TE tT Rts Eo TA

like an elder brother trying to
get the youngest of the family
out of a scrape. And the kid,
pulling a face, climbed down
without a murmur. .

That was typical of many other
incidents I witnessed. Gone are
the jackbooted, helmeted police
who ‘stood by laughing in 1933
when armed Hitler Youths smash-
ed in my face because I was
Jewish.

Every night at 11 o’clock, the

PTL Tt ee UR ee ee EE EEE Ue On Gat See SO Pt TP tt Ta 0d 0 TT

People’s Police day-duty men
drive off to their quarters. Stand-
ing three night running in the
Alexander Platz, which is more
or less the centre of Democratic
Berlin and packed with people,
I heard the policemen shout
“Freundschaft!” (“friendship!”),
waving to the crowds.

Now anybody can train any
police force to shout almost any-
thing, but nobody can make
thousands of people smile, wave
and shout back “Freundschaft!”

Yet ‘in the Alexander Platz
people do greet the police in this
way—a measure of the friendly

Woodworkers in

By S. VASILYEV |

ITH its vast forest the Soviet
Union is the richest timber
country in the world. Of the

€arth’s total forest area estimated

at 7,500 million acres, 2,747
million acres lie within the boun-

aries of the USSR.

ese enormous timber resources

— Untill recently were worked mainly

Y hand seasonal labor. Today.
‘ogging is ja highly developed
industry in the Soviet Union,
for its equipment and or-
8anization has far outstripped
Such developed timber industries

Ss that of Canada and the United

tates, .
', A lumberjack working with axe

‘8 quite a rarity in the Soviet
Mion. Hard and low-productive

Work has been replaced in the

logging camps of the USSR by

Modern Soviet labor-saving and

highly productive machines and

‘Mplements,

The Soviet logging ‘industry;
Possesses a huge number of trac-
ey and trucks, many portable

®ctric stations, thousands of
Power saws and winches, tractor-
mounted lift cranes, locomotives

; Other machines and power
Ss,

- and power tools.

The new technical facilities of
the Soviet timber industry has
called for a new type of logging
worker.
in the Soviet logging camps to-
day are power-saw cutters, elec-
tricians, tractor drivers, truck
drivers, locomotive drivers, crane

operators, etc.

eee a job that formerly re-
quired enormous physical effort,
in the Soviet logging camps is
now performed by power saws
of Soviet make — the best and
lightest ever known. Thus, the

‘one-man TSNIIME K-45 Soviet

power saw is far superior to any

of its kind abroad.

Special logging raitroads, au
mobile and tractor roads now
pierce the Soviet forests for
many. tens of thousands of miles.
‘And their network is expanding

ith ever ear. :
is ones enigeen that logging
of tens of millions of cubic feet

of timber @ year, using a vast
array of mechanical facilities, is
with permanent

possible only ; th
‘ trained in the efficien
eae new machines

Srati of the
opération of Tah a eeeins

end of the Second World War
thousands of new workers have
been trained for the lumber in-
dustry, the-number. of permanent

to-

And the leading trades -

workers engaged in logging hav-
ing more than doubled in the
post-war years.

With the hard work taken out
of logging, the workers are learn-
ing new trades of logging equip-
ment operators. And to do so
there are open for them numerous
technical courses and _ schools.
This training the workers receive
entirely free, the entire cost of it
being borne by the state.

As. are other Soviet workers,
the loggers are imbued with the
knowledge that the product of
their work is going into the peace-
ful construction of their country.

They know that from the timber-

produced in the north, up in.
Archangelsk Region, the collec-
tive farmers of southern Crimea
@have built new houses and schools
on the ashes of the war; that the
timber from the Urals and Siberia
goes for the rehabilitation of
heroic Stalingrad and the con-

’

struction’ of the world’s biggest

hydroelectric stations on the

Volga.

His highly-productive mechan-
ized labor brings the Soviet log-
ging worker high earnings and a
steadily increasing standard of
living. Logging work is highly
paid in the Soviet Union, although
typical earnings of 3,500 roubles

the Soviet Union

in a month are virtually meaning-
less translated into dollars and
can only be reckoned in terms of
what they will buy at Soviet
prices—and Soviet prices are fall-
ingnot rising, and the quantity
of consumer goods is being in-
creased, not curtailed.

Fundamental changes have been
effected in the living conditions
of Soviet woodworkers.

An idea of how they live may
be gained from the story told by
N. Baulin and I. Kolobov, workers
in the Paisky logging camp in
the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Social-
ist Republic. Here is what they
tell: I

“Prior to the Revolution, tim-
ber workers lived in dilapidated
huts and tents. They walked
miles to work carrying their sup-
plies on their backs.

“The situation is entirely dif-
ferant today. We live in a com-
fortable forest settlement. We
have a school, a club, a library,
movies and radio. In the even-
ing our settlement is ablaze with
electric lights. In the settlement
stores we can now buy anything
we want. Our canteens deliver
hot meals right to the camps.
And we don’t walk to our jobs
—we go by rail in special com-
fortable cars.”

relations between East Germans
and “our” police, as they proudly
call them.

Most East German policemen
are young—about 19 to 26, with
only an occasional over-30. In
my travels to six European coun-
tries I have never met such a
young police force.

Later I found out the reason.

Under the Potsdam Agreement
no ex-Nazi is allowed to work
in the. German Home or Foreign
Offices or be a teacher or police-
man. And the laws of the Ger-
man Democratic Republic strin-
gently enforce the Potsdam Agree-
ment. ,

Once I had been told this, I
made a point of going up to the
occasional elderly policeman to
discover why he was in the force.
And each time there was a per-
fectly good reason.

Heinz had been in the Social
Democratic party since 1930 and
been in a concentration camp
under Hitler. Fritz had been a
political refugee in Britain, Kurt
had fought in the International
Brigade in Spain from 1936 on-
ward, Wolfgang had led an illegal
Communist party factory group,
and sQ on. :

e &

Another lie which is dished up
again and again in this country
is about “regimented German
youth.” This at once conjures
up pictures of marching Hitler
Youth in black and brown uni-
forms.

My nose still hurts from the
time it was broken by some of
Hitler’s young toughs nearly 20
years ago, so I am not exactly
partial to Hitler Youths what-
ever the color of their shirts. ‘

So I took a pretty close look
at the Free German Youth. There
are about 3,000,000 of them and
there is no compulsion to join.

Any member can also belong to
any political party if he wants to.
Most of the those I talked to did
not, but one was in the Demo-
cratic party and some in the
Socialist Unity party.

Not once did I hear any of the
old military tunes or see any
goose-stepping. Today’s young
Germans sing new tuneful songs
of peace and friendship among
all people.

Many of them wear the blue
shirt—some wear it open-necked,
soMe not; some with scarves,
others with gay little caps. Some
wear \long trousers, some short;
some dark shirts, some colorful
cotton dirndls.

The whole effect is one of
color, not of uniformity. Many
never bother to put on the blue
shirt or even the Free German
Youth badge with the rising sun
—symbol of a new generation.

German youth organizations
have always worn distinguishing
jackets or shirts—just as the Boy
Scouts or Girl Guides do in this
country.

When I joined a Liberal Jew-
ish-German youth organization in
the early thirtiés, I used to bad-
ger my mother to buy me a grey
windbreaker, because my friends
and brothers wore them for our
communal hikes. But that did
not make me a Nazi!

Many. of the Free German
Youth have been in the Hitler
Youth, membership of which was
compulsory. I questioned them on
this and their general attitude
was:

“Look at the ruins of Berlin.
Do you think we want to live
through that sort of thing again?
We want peace to give us a
chance to rebuild our homes, to
study and to have an interesting
job.”

An old miner gave me this mes-
sage: :

“Tell your friends that we have
learned our lesson. & We shall
never take up arms again, for an-
other war would be fought right
here on our own doorstep. And
we have not even rebuilt the
houses from the damages of the
last war yet.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 19, 1951 — PAGE 5