ata lie aR Local folk singer life likes in GDR By PERRY FRIEDMAN . BERLIN—The first thing that strikes you on your arrival to the German Democratic Republic is the tremen- dous amount of money that is spent on culture here. No, it’s not rammed down your throat, but it’s there for those who want it. If you do want a ticket for a performance it’s best to get it the day they come out, otherwise you may not get in. There are two opera com- panies performing every night. There are also many live theatres ‘and very popular is _ the Brecht Ensemble which is . noted by American critics as the best live theatre. Worth mentioning is the tremendous talent of Ernst Bush who- will be remembered in Canada by his recording on the Spanish front lines of Six SOngs for Democracy. Not only is he a great singer but also a truly great actor. He and Hans Eis- ler, the composer, perform concerts. What with the many variety shows and _ concerts there is more than enough to see and hear in East Berlin. I first arrived in Berlin or what is now called East Ber- lin two days before the work- ers were to celebrate May Day. That was in 1959. Little did I realize as I watched the huge May Day crowds that my whole life was about to change. On May 1 I was invited to sing in the Sportshall in Stalin- allee which holds about 7,000 people. I will never forget the enthusiasm with which I was received. I started with Which Side Are You On. Before long we were all singing together My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, which was followed by a peace song, then Down BY The Riverside, and the old Ger- man folk song, Die Gedenken Sind Frei (My thoughts are free). I have never received such a warm appreciation and it will be a long time before I forget the evening of May 1, 1959. About two weeks after the May Day concert I chanced to bump into Earl Robinson, the American folk composer, in the radio station at Rundfunk. He was here to conduct his Cantata Lonesome Train. It was a lucky meeting for me as I got the job playing banjo, mind you the first banjo with the radio symphony orchestra of the GDR. The concert was performed in the State Opera House and also’ televised and transmitted by radio. While rehearsals were going on for LonesCme Train I was invited to Rostock for the Sixth Youth Parliament of the Free German Youth. Later I took part at Rostock in a huge pageant which had at least 2,000 performers who came from factories, offices and schools. The opening was at- tended by Walter Ulbricht, secretary of the Socialist Unity Party. Soon after I was invit- ed to sing at the Workers Fes- tival in Halle. It was in between these concerts that I first met Pro- fessor Eberhard Rebling, di- rector of the school of music here in Berlin, and. his wife Lin. She is a wonderful Jewish folk singer who recently came back from a successful tour of England. It was Rebling who first brought up the subject of staying | here and_ studying music. It’s to them and the Government of the GDR that I owe my thanks. To outline my average day as a student would take too long, I’m afraid. I am not able to take in the whole course this year as my German is limited. Right now I am taking sing- ing and piano lessons and try- ing desperately to learn Ger- man. : ‘ There are many foreign stu- dents here, most of whom study in either Leipzig or Dres- den. All foreign students re- ceive a handsome stipend of 280 marks, which, if one wish- es to stretch can go a long way. Besides the stipend the gov- ernment pays the fares for all students. I also get a lot of work sing- ing at concerts which bring me in qa fair amount. I am able to get a lot of radio work and now busy preparing for a TV. program this month. I am also trying to finish my book on American labor songs in time for the deadline. It should be out in April with an ac- companying record of six songs. I have sung to hundreds of workers in factories organized by the trade unions which are very strong here. The workers are now making good money and the standard of living is continuously rising. Its really quite hard for them to under- stand why in a big country like Canada there should be so much unemployment. The question here of anti- Semitism is being tackled with success. I can say as a Jew now living here that I have met with no incidents of anti- Semitism. In the city of Halle I was taken through a Jewish synogogue by the president who spent eight years in one of the concentration camps. He gave me one of the six point- ed stars with the word “Jude” Vancouverite folk singer Perry Friedman has become a hit in East Germany. on it which he had to wear pinned on his clothes. Its re- markable how he lived through it. There is now a big monu- ment to the Jewish people who died in Buchenwald at the cemetery in Halle. The film industry here has done an outstanding job pro- ducing documentaries on the Nazis. The Case of Spiedel might be known to you. This film was banned in England but following protests it is now being shown. The Ger- man film Diary of Anne Frank is also stirring. It is a 22-minute documentary. Linn Jaldati, who was one of the four people who buried the bodies of Anne and her sister sings a stirring Jewish song in this film. It is called Our City burns, brothers. There are many foreign films playing here. Hamlet had a long run’ and now Romeo and Juliet is showing. There are many films from Italy, France, Soviet Union, etc: The other night -on television we saw the English comedy Gen- evieve. : All in all I can say that from what I have seen so far in the - GDR it has made a great im- pression on me. I am very happy to have the opportunity to study music here and I send Canadians the warmest greetings from my fellow stu- dents. Senator Joe McCarthy is dead, but his black shadow remains FELLOW journalist urged Richard Rovere, author of Senator Joe McCarthy to “throw some light on why American society appeared so vulnerable to an adventurer armed mainly (so it seems) by the timidity of his victims.” Rovere admits that his bio- graphy throws very little light on this. : He paints a frightening pic- ture o& McCarthy’s methodical climb to power from small- town lawyer to the ‘senator from Wisconsin” whose name today is synonomous with the technique of the lying smear, with the evils of the witch- hunt. Like Hitler, McCarthy used “fear of Bolshevism’ as a means of pressure and persecu- tion — and, also like Hitler, in this he received powerful back- ing from rich and influential sections of American Big Bus- iness, such as the China lobby. His outrageous lies, his self- invented “heroism” during the war, his threat to impeach Truman, his attacks on Dean Acheson, General George Mar- shall—above all the thousands of decent Americans cut down by his wide swipes of calumny —are today common knowl- edge. McCarthy is dead, it is true, but McCarthyism is still very much alive. American Communists are still in jail, still being persecu- ted—and it is still not enough (as it wasn’t then) “for anyone to say that he wasn’t a. card- carrying Communist.” One senses in Rovere’s book a reluctantly hinted admira- tion for McCarthy (“a revolu- tionist without any revolution- ary. vision, a rebel without a cause’), there is even a sug- gestion that he was a “hero” in an inverted sense. 4 But U.S. foreign policy in the first half of the 1950s was not shaped by fear of Mc- Carthy‘s influence, as Rovere suggests — McCarthy couldn’t have happened but for the character of U.S. policy at that time. He was the product, not the initiator, of that policy. He shot into the limelight at a time when the cold war was at its height a month or so after Alger Hiss had been imprisoned, a few months be- fore Korea. And—to this, Rovere gives incredibly scant attention—the way for McCarthy had already been well opened up, partic- ularly by such people as Rich- ard Nixon, now US. Vice- President. Though it is admitted that Nixon had “‘an informing touch of McCarthy himself” and rec-~ orded that McCarthy thought Nixon “will make a fine Vice- President,’ the role of Nixon before and during the Mc- Carthy period never emerges. But Rovere, assuming from the outset that Communists are America‘s domestic enemy and the Soviet Union its enemy abroad, was defeated before he put pen to paper. BERT BAKER February 19, 1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 5