Fe
2

Protest scheme
to free Meyer

When Defense Minister Brooke Claxton told the House of Commons last week
that Major-General Kurt Meyer, one-time startenfuehrer of the 25th Panzer Grenadier
Regiment of the 12th SS (Hitler Youth) Division, may soon be released (apparently
to become the commander of German divisions mobilized for NATO) a storm of pro-

test swept across Canada.

Executive director Colonel John Wise of the British Columbia Disabled Veterans’

Claxton breaks pledge
on Kurt Meyer sentence -

OTTAWA
Major-General Kurt Meyer, the
Nazi war criminal responsible for
the murder of 144 Canadian pris-
oners of war in France during
1944, is slated for release in a
few months, Defense Minister
Brooke Claxton has informed the
House of Commons.

Meyer was also responsible for
the brutal murder of POWs and
civilians in Poland, Yugoslavia,
Russia and France between 1939
and 1944,

On December 28, 1945, a Can-
adian military court sentenced
Meyer to be shot for inciting his
troops to murder Canadian POWs.
Major-General C. Vokes, then
Canadian commander in Ger-
many, commuted Meyer’s death
sentence to life imprisonment.
Subsequently the sentence was re-
duced to 14 years which, Claxton
ton pointed out, made him elig-
ible for release in a few months.

Meyer was held in Dorchester
Penitentiary from May 1946 to
October 1951, when he was sec-
retly flown back to Werl Prison,
West Germany.

KURT MEYER
He: must not go free

At that time, ‘confronted with
widespread popular protest, Clax-
ton pledged that “Meyer’s trans-
fer will not change his sentence.”

‘Beat
the
Threat
of

HEAR

TIM BUCK

Depression’

Friday, Jan. 29 - - 8 p.m.

PENDER AUDITORIUM

(Arrangements have been made for overflow meeting)

THIS MEETING WILL ALSO COMMEMO-
RATE THE 30th ANNIVERSARY OF
LENIN’S DEATH.

_ Auspices: Vancouver Committee, Labor-Progressive Party |

Association said that his organiz-

ation is “definitely against” the
release of ‘the Nazi war criminal.

In Hamilton, Ontario, Canadian
Legion regional vice-president R.
H. Mann declared that “we see
in Kurt Meyer and his kind the
danger to world peace for which
we have fought for three dec-
ades.””. Mann joined with Rabbi
B. Baskin in protesting release
of Meyer. ©

Quebec Legion president A. C.
Solomon, assailing the govern-
ment’s decision on Meyer, said:
“This is tantamount to dishonor-
ing the memory of those Cana-
dians who fought and died to de-
feat Nazism.”

T. D. Anderson, Dominion Com-
mand secretary of the Canadian
Legion, predicted “strong pro-
tests” from the veterans,

E. M. Aplin, Toronto Peace
Council chairman, an RCAF vet-
eran, urged Defense Minister
Claxton to “make it clear that
arms will not again be placed in
the hands of Nazi generals” and
that war criminals “serve their
sentences in full.” He appealed
to Canadian war veterans: to at-
tend the Congress of Support for
Negotiated Peace and “express
their opposition to German re-
armament.”

Mrs. Libbie Park, Toronto Peace
Council secretary, called upon
David Croll, MP, “to oppose the
policies which require the release

_ of Meyer, the placing of arms in

the hands of Nazi generals, and
the maintaining of a divided Ger-
many as a powder keg in. the
centre of Europe.” She stressed:
“Through negotiation lies the way
to a demilitarized, united, peace-
able Germany.”

Continued

BILL 7

urges all its readers to send their
protests (no postage stamp is re-
quired) in this fight to keep Mc-
Carthyism out of Canada:

E. T. Applewhaite (Lib., Skee-

_ na); T. S. Barnett (CCF, Comox-

Alberni); J. A. Byrne (Lib., Koot-
enay East); Colin Cameron (CCF,
Nanaimo); Hon. R. O. Campney
(Lib., Vancouver Centre); E. T.
Fairey (Lib., Victoria).

E. D. Fulton (PC, Kamloops);
T. H. Goode (Lib., Burnaby-Rich-
mond); Howard Green (PC, Van-
couver Quadra); F. G. J. Hahn
(SC, New Westminster); H. W.

Herridge (CCF, Kootenay West);.

O. L. Jones (CCF, Okanagan-
Boundary).

B. R. Leboe (SC, Cariboo); J
L. MacDougall (Lib., Vancouver-
Burrard); Angus MacInnis (CCF,
Vancouver-Kingsway); G. W. Mc-
Leod (SC, Okanagan-Revelstoke);
A. B. Patterson (SC, Fraser Val-
ley); G. R. Pearkes (PC, Esqui-
malt-Saanich).

Elmore Philpott (Lib., Vancou-
ver South); Erhart Regier (CCF,
Burnaby-Coquitlam); J. A. Sim-
mons (Lib., Yukon); Hon. James
Sinclair (Lib., Coast-Capilano);
Harold Winch (CCF, Vancouver
East).

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During the grim winter of 1950’iobless workers in Vancouver
organized an “Opération Porkchops” lobby to Victoria, and later
took part in’ a national “Work and Wages” lobby to Ottawa.
This year, with unemployment at a post-war high, similar action
is again imperative.

Continued from page 1

- registered job-seekers.

UNEMPLOYMENT

forever and can never be regain-
ed.” He urged a combined ap-
proach of organized labor and
management to meet the. threat.

MacArthur linked his call for
action. against layoffs with the
current “pressure being brought
to bear to restrictively amend our
Ontario Labor Relations Act,” urg-
ing that labor stem off any pro-
posed restrictive amendments and
advance instead liberal changes
in the act.

Delegates expressed the grow-
ing sense of job insecurity by en-
dorsing a resolution covering the
need for immediate construction
of the St. Lawrence Seaway which
“would provide a great deal of
employment for many years at a
time when the danger of unem-
ployment is growing.” The reso-
lution was submitted by a Toron-
to local of the United Brother-
hood of Carpenters and Joiners.

Similar resolutions stressed the
need for a publicly-owned All-
Canada pipeline; a 50,000 low-
rental housing program for the
next two years; amendments to
the Ontario Hours of Work Act
for a 40-hour a week maximum
‘instead of the present 44-hour

week; and a national health and
pension plan.

Many delegates were not un-
critical of the Bengough-Mac-
Arthur speeches, pointing to the
lack of well-defined positive poli-
cies to meet rising unemployment.
The important resolutions on the
seaway, housing and the pipeline
were rushed through with a mini-
mum of debate in the final hour
of the convention.

One textile union delegate
charged that the convention com-
mittee had “flagrantly put aside”
what was ‘happening in his indus-
try.

“Are we going to sit aside and
let American monopoly . come
over here?” he asked, but was
ruled out of order.

While MacArthur rapped the
delegate for not bringing in a
resolution on the textile crisis,
he himself had nothing to say
on the situation in the hard-hit
textile industry.

When the job-creating pipeline
resolution came to the floor, an-
other delegate rapped the lack of
debate and timing of its presenta-
tion,’ declaring it was “a confound-
ed shame that the issue was be-
ing pushed off.” -

Unions to lobby MPs

Ottawa admitted this week that ,

unemployment in Canada has hit
a post-war high.

Lagging more than a full month
behind increasing cutbacks and
layoffs in Canada’s key industries,
the federal labor department’ Ss
national employment service fig-
ures for December 10 had 338,066
looking for work, compared to
312,000 in the late winter of 1950,
before the Korean war.

The NES figures show ony
Actual
number of unempioyed was prob-
ably around 400,000 a month ago,
and today is nearing ihe half-mil-
lion mark.

Montreal has 53,000 jobless,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE

Toronto 27,000, Vancouver 23,000
and Winnipeg 20,000. Even hard-
er hit by unemployment, in pro-
portion to population, are hun-
dreds of smaller industrial cities
and towns.

A fortnight ago B.C. Federation
of Labor (CCL) placed the British
Columbia jobless total at 52,000.
New layoffs and cutbacks have

-uppped that figure since then.

Two big CCL unions, the United
Automobile Workers and the
Steelworkers, will interview the
federal cabinet in Ottawa Febru-
ary 10 on layoffs, United Elec-
trical Workers also plans to lobby
MPs on the unemployment crisis.

— JANUARY 22, 1954 — PAGE 12