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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

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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