LU Lt AA

m ae 45% ete as ;

: Here the representative investigating commission sent to Korea by

the W omen’s International Democratic Federation is shown inspecting the graves of atrocity victims. Lilly Waechter was a member of the.

commission, which was headed by Mrs. Nora Rodd of Canada.

LILLY WAECHTER:

Just ‘a housewife - but her words stir Germany

YOU WOULD scarcely notice her if you saw her standing be- side you at the grocery store or super-market — just a dumpy, cheerful, middle-aged woman-’in a raincoat and a nondescript sort of hat.

But in October, 1951, this or- dinary West German housewife was sentenced to eight months imprisonment and fined 15,000 West Marks—over $3,000.

What was her crime? Forgery, perhaps, or cruelty to children? Not a,bit of it. She was sen- tenced for telling the truth, and even the American Military Court which imposed this mon- strous sentence did not dispute that she had told the truth.

Here is what happened. In May, 1951, the Korean Demo- cratic Women’s League invited 21 women from 17 different countries to visit their country to see the terrible results of the war there.

The delegates came from all sorts of different parties and professions, and one of them was Frau Lilly Waechter, house- wife, aged 51, a member of the Social Democratic party of Ger- many all her adult life.

She, and the other members of the delegation. saw the bomb- ed and burned villages, the mass graves, the mutilated children, and all the misery and destruc- tion of war.

When she returned to West Germany Lilly Waechter, filled with rage and compassion and a sense of the burning urgency of making sure that the same fate did not overcome her own homeland, began to address meetings.

In simple words she told of her journey, and what she had seen and heard of.the horrible things, done by the foreign

._troops of intervention fighting

in Korea, .

Suddenly she was arrested, and charged, under Law No. 14, passed by the Western Allied High Commission in 1949, with:

“Acts showing hostility and lack of respect to the allied forces by making statements about atrocities, brutalities and tortures ‘inflicted by American soldiers in North Korea on help- less women and children.”

The witnesses who appeared to testify against her were an interesting collection — one American Counter “Intelligence Corps official, two German de- tectives, and two German em- ployees of the American occu- pation forces.

Summing up, the American judge said, ““The question of the truth or ‘falsity of the state- ments made by the accused are not under discussion’; he then proceeded to sentence her to eight months in jail and 15,000 marks fine.

The sentence raised a storm of protest, not only in Germany but in other parts in the world. and. in January, 1952, her, ap- peal against the sentence was heard by the American High Court in Frankfurt. After hear- ing defense arguments by Brit- ish King’s Counsel D. N. Pritt, famous international lawyer, the court adjourned, stating that its findings would be announced later. At the time of writing no announcement had _ been made.

‘ x x x

MEANWHILE Lilly Waechter continues to fight for - peace, and against the new Nazi army. She Knows only too well-what Nazism means. Her brother was kicked to death by a SS man in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1939, her mother was gassed in Auschwitz, her father starved to death in Theresien- stadt camp. Se

Latest example of her: deter- mination and fighting spirit came on February 24 when she led 500 women in a sitdown strike in the little town of Loeffingen in the French Zone as police tried to shut down an international women’s. confer- ence held there,

Heavily armed West German police and French military police surrounded the hall where the conference, attended by women from France and Switzerland as weli as Germany, was being held, and ordered it closed. The 500 delegates, led by Frau Waechter, kept their seats and refused to budge until they had completed the whole business of the conference, which was call- ed to foster good neighborly re- lations between countries,

rT) de ee ee ee

WOMEN'S

news and views

PRU RUBBER EERE REE RRR EE EE) BELPER ERR URE BEEN ERE RR EERIE

FILE AT OLYMPIA

Soldiers’ mothers seeking

peace initiative on ballot

THREE BELLINGHAM] wo- men have filed in the ‘'Washing- ton state capital at Olympia an initiative proposal calilng on the U.S. Congress to declare it is the policy of the United States to live in peaceful co-existence with all other nations, All three women have sons in military service two of whom are now fighting in Korea.

The first such attempt on the Pacifie Coast, the proposal will be known as Initiative No. 183. When the ballot title is issued official initiative petitions can be printed for the 50,000 sig- natures of registered voters re- quired to place it on the ballot at the November 4 election. Deadline for signatures is July

$3

The measure also; calls on the U.S. government to implement the Charter of the United Na- tions by ‘inviting the respon- sible heads of the governments of the leading nations of the

world to a conference to nego-

tiate a settlement of their ex- isting differences and to reach such agreement as will end the threat of war for this genera- tion and for generations to come.”’ aa

Those who filed the initiative are Mrs. - Patricia Cary, Mrs:

Mona Thomas, and Mrs. Ruby Davis. Mrs. Cary’s son, a Ma- rine, has been wounded in Ko- rea. Mrs. Davis’ son is also in Korea, while Mrs. Thomas’ son is in the U.S. Army in Alaska. * a * EXPLAINING why they made use of the initiative the women said ‘‘we have sought to make use of the democratic means at our disposal and, under our state constitution, at the dis- posal of all citizens. to take an atcion for peace that has mean- ing, that can bring results and that will help, we-believe, to bring our boys and the boys of all mothers home and keep them there to permit them to grow to

manhood. in their own com- munities, in their own’ homes, in peace.”

Under Washington state con- stitution the people through an initiative may, like the legis- lature, either enact laws or memoralize Congress.

Although the initiative has been used most often to legis- late, there is precedent for a people’s memorial, In 1948 the World Federalists filed such an initiative. It was given a ballot title but failed to obtain suf-

ficient signatures: to go on the

ballot—TERRY PETTUS.

CANADIAN WORKERS’ FAMILIES’ LIVING COSTS *.-,

(ee Bases

MNS BG

for @ $1.81

1946 6 31.63 °

‘

I WAS READING Alice Through the Looking Glass to Katy and John at bedtime the other night, and came to the part where

the Red Queen and Alice start to run.

The Queen urges Alice to

go faster and faster till poor Alice feels they are nearly flying. Finally, exhausted. they stop, only to find they are still in the same

place they started from.

The Queen explains to Alice, ‘“Now, here,

you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same

place.” ;

I have a hunch that Finance Minister Abbott must have had this little episode in mind when he dreamed up the new budget for Canadians — no matter how hard you work, how much you try

and save, you find yourself in exactly the same spot.

And it’s the

little fellow who will have to run the hardest in the coming year what with more wage cuts to pay for his old age pension,in the

sweet by and by.

Apart from the fact that a cut in pay for the average family will ruin what is left of their budget, the fact is, that of 94,089 workers at the age of eighteen only 38,569 or 41 percent will be alive at 70 to collect, and of those, 2391 or six percent would collect

for only one year.

On top of that none of the money collected for old age pension purposes is repayable-to one’s heirs.

ith continu-

ing inflation the purchasing power of such pensions decreases, so many will never get full value of these forced savings. °

Seems as though we're insured against almost everything — unemployment, sickness, old age — now all they need to do is insure us against the mortgage company and the grocer, that is, if one is

able to collect of course.

Government schemes for insurance always

end up with an applicant being put through the third degree as

though he were trying.to get something he hadn’t paid for himself, As the Red Queen said to Alice. ‘“That’s the effects of living

backwards, it always makes one a little giddy at first—”

me

*

I MENTIONED IN my last column that young John had swal-

lowed a nrarble.

We know now how long it takes for such an object

to travel through a little boy’s system. For one week we waited patiently for it to make its appearance and just when we had given up hope, he came running into the kitchen crying ‘I’ve got it!” Such excitement there was and John was exactly like a chicken that

had laid an egg, giggling and dancing round like mad.

Poor little

* character thought he was stuck with a marble in him for the rest

,of his days, I guess.—B.G.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 18, 1952 — PAGE 10:

Real living costs

This chart is reproduced from the book “@fow High Are Living Costs?” published jointly by the Mine-Mill and United Plectrical Workers unions, The exhaustive survey put the real index finger last September at 256.2 as com-

pared with the government's of- ficial index of 189.8. :

ACT DISCRIMINATES

Layoffs hit women hard:

HOW ARE hitting Canadian women work- ers and housewives?

current

Singled out for discrimina- tion when employed, women are especially hard hit when the lay- off axe drops.

Discrimination exists within the Unemployment Insurance Act itself as regards receiving of benefits’ for -women workers. Cases of women workers show that a woman may be working steadily for seven or eight years, contributing her unemployment insurance all the time,

Then the woman stops work for a year while she has a child. At the end of the year. perhaps, when she is ready to work again, and needs the extra wages more than ever ,with an extra child to support, she finds that since she ‘‘voluntarily’” left her job. she is unable to claim insurance. Her earlier years of steady con- tribution to the fund count for nothing. oy

é This is straight discrimination against women within the act, and should be changed.

Some women have found that

their own unions have been able to get them immediate action from the Unemployment Insur-: ance Commission,

One worker let out of a Tor- onto plant organized into the United Electrical Workers (UE) had refused to accept a job as: a cook because she had a small son and would have had to live away from home. >

She was arbitrarily cut off

from het benefits, but through —

pressure of the UE was rein- stated. The UE has successfully fought through several cases on behalf of its union members in cases where girls had refused to accept jobs at considerably lower wages and had been cut off from unemployment inSsur- ance.— MARION FRANK.

layoffs

,