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24 THE DAILY TIMES-GAZETTE, Thursday, May 14, 1853 Austrian Tells Of Behind Red Barbed Wire ENNA -- Despite Sanyo | But the response from the rank, efforts fro mthe respective govern- and file was considerable, the ex-| ments to get their people back, |officer added. | there still are several hundred | He heard later that the Paulus | thousand war prisoners -- Ger-| Army went into action against the | man, Austrians, and Japanese -- German Wehrmacht near Riga. He | in Soviet camps. | believes tet aitervard jt as dis- | itions under which most | banded an many of mem- | of e Soni can be imagined from | bers now are holding goed posts | the account given to the Christian in East Germany. He saw Field Science Monitor by a young Aus- Marshal von Paulus' villa near trian who, a few weeks ago, re-| Moscow and was told that he gull | Bee ee ha Ravin | Gado Sool. General Seals, oe a prisoner of war in the viet | Cadet | + . Union. said, is serving a 25-year sen-| i i i tence in Siberia. Until such time as he is able Asked what life was like at Yela- to Ray 8 Viens - whieh buga, the young Austrian would | like Ber So 2 troops -- his name | ORLY reply that conditions fully Jide Rg bors out the ade of 3, book Je * » said one o mates had writ- The young Austrian was a& first ten after he 'was released. Its lieutenant in the German Army. name he added, is 'One Thou-| Together with his unit he Was eap- sand Days as an Animal', red in January, a - | tta For many days previously | INTO SEPARATE CAMP . they had heard Russian loud- He himself only stayed there one | speakers promising them "plenty | year. He was then moved to a of food, cinemas, theatres," and so camp near Gorki. At that time | on. the moment they surrendered, |the Soviet Government ran (wo) anti-fascist schools at Gorki and | ONLY HALF ARRIVED {two others at Kransnogorsk (near During the three weeks which Moscow) in the hope of winning followed their surrender the prison- | recruits from among the PWs. ers counted themselves lucky Chief organizer of these schools they got a two-pound bread a day | was Herr Fander], the former edi- to share between three, At the end toy of Gobbels' paper Das Reich. of that time they were marched 75 Among the instructors were a num- miles in four days. ; _ |ber of Austrian Cemmunists, in- Of the 12,000 who were in his cluding several of the present contingent only 6,000 arrived. He jeaders of the Austrian Commu- says he does not know what hap-| nist Party: Franz Honner, Johann pened to the others. He could only Koplenig, and Ernst Fischer. say: : The anti-fascist schools were "Those who fell behind never closed in 1948 but whether be- caught up with us again, Bome-:cgyge they had failed or were no| times we heard shots in the dis-|ionger required is not on record. | tange. Many of my comrades were At Gorki, instead of being hous- | also killed by shots from Soviet pq with the Germans, the Aus: soldiers passing us in trucks on otrian officers and those of the| their way to the front smaller countries were put into a | The camp to which the young separate camp. There were, he Austria nmarched was controlled said, about 200 Austrians, 1,500 Ro- | for the most part by some 200 Ger- manians, and a few Poles and Hun- man deserters who called them- | arians. There also were three selves "Fighters against Fascism. | Fenchinen, one or two Italians, | There were 120 PWs to each hut. and one Dutchman. They slept on wooden benches' Op May 9, 1945, the PWs were | which were about two feet wide. |paraded and told that the war had | When they arrived it was win- ended so that they would be sent | ter but there was no heating. When {home soon -- as, of course, they | he left, nine months later, he had should have been in accordance been there the whole summer but| with the Geneva Convention. What | there was no ventilation and DO geciually happened, however, was | sanitation at any time. When the that, hn they lost the Red | ground thawed they were set 10 Cross parcels which they had re- | work cutting peat turves for fuel. ceived during the first half of 1945 Their rations were eabbage SOUP and then they were ordered to three times a day, 400 grams | work They had been receiving the | (about 14 ounces) of bread, and Red Cross packages since the end | some porridge made of unhusked of 1944. When the packages Hirst | oats. Most of the 00d Was 808rCe- arrived. the PWs found the food | ly eatable. |too rich for them after the ra STALINGRAD RECALLED | tions they had been receiving. Toward the end of 1943, he was |ON JOB PAVING ROADS | transferred to an officers' camp at Their work at Gorki was pav- Yelabuga about 500 miles east of ing roads. Officers and men alike Moscow. Six months afterward, he | worked in batches of 20 and each and his fellow PWs were paraded |batch was expected to pave 400 to hear a proclamation by Field square meters daily. If they ful- Marshal von Paulus, General Seid- | filled their norm they each re- litz, and 16 other German generals | ceived 200 more grams of bread. urging them to join the "Libera-| While at Gorki they at last were tion Army" and promising them |able to attend movies and theatres | | ceived wages for their work, | refused to accept the commission's | four officers who took turns. |award and stayed in the camp. He | | handled by PWs. He immediately | Policy in 1827. 'as far as Abo sent with 500 other PWs -- mostly ones who, like himself, had tried to escape -- to the hard coal mines Karaganda in the heart of at Kazakhstan, nearly 1,600 miles as | the crow flies from Leningrad. He spent 15 months in the mines at Karaganda and then was sen- tenced to 20 years in prison for selling an old shirt and shorts which had been issued to him when in the German Army. was forbidden, but they seldom IN DAMP AND DARK CELL got into trouble for doing it, He appealed the sentence and At the end of 1945, most of the | yas" then given 25 years for *in- Austrian officer PWs at Gorki| jn, manity" in that he had helong- were transferred to a fresh camp leq to the Wehrmacht, and 25 --this time at Windau, near Riga, |vears for espionage.-The sentence where they were again mixed With | fo; selling his own property was Germans. In view of the fact that | equced from 20 to 15 years, but as the war was over and they Were |ihe.three sentences were to run entitled to go home, the Austrians |,onsecutively they now added up -- but not the Germans -- refus-|¢, g5 years in all. ed to carry out the camp €OM-| He and nine others were all sen- mandant's order to work. After tenced in 10 minutes. about two months a special com-| while under interrogation he was mission came from Moscow 0 8d-| confined in an unlighted cell, the judicate the dispute, Its verdiet|walls of which were dripping with went against the Austrians but | water. There was no room to lie from that time the prisoners re-| down, The longest interrogation to ESCAPED--BUT CAUGHT which he had to submit was 16 The young Austrian, however, hours at a stretch, carried out by To serve, nis jenience he was was not punished for refusing to|sent to zkaggan, al work but Prely had to report To miles from Karaganda, Where Ld eral mes | remaine or Iwo years, Bee Bouse, several most of which he was working on In January, 1947, he heard there (a copper mine which had been ex- was a Finnish ship in the harbor, |propriated from a British firm at the cargo of pe AY was to be | the time of Lenin's New Economic decided to join a work party with| He said that in spite of the the object of stowing away on |communistic boast that Russian board Ie a the ship ot He sue- | technical methods and machines ceeded in doing so and actually got |are far superior to those of the without being dis- | West, most of the machiwery in covered. There he found that under | use at Dzezkazgan was that left an agreement with the Soviet Gov- [behind by the British. ernment, all escaping PWs must | STAYED WITH NOMADS | be handed back. Two weeks lat-| The camp at Dzezkazgan was (er, therefore, he found himself in| so remote that he had a good Leningrad. {deal of liberty. At one period he At that time the young Austrian was sent to help the Kazakh nomad | said, it was not an offense for a [shephetds with whom he spent prisoner of war to try to escape.|some 10 weeks. They were all Nevertheless, he was beaten with earnest Moslems and he found! rifle butts and so ill - treated in | most of them "very western-mind- | other ways that for three months ed." he was unable to stand. | He was the only PW in this In the following May when he camp. The other prisoners had had sufficiently recovered he was'all been sentenced for such things | By Gene Ahern | WELL, SINCE IVE 3 7] NEVER PLAYED PASTURE | POOL, YOURE WASTING THE HONOR ON ME... IF THATS A PUTTER, WHAT'S IT USED POR? «+. TURNING ON WE SPRINKLING SYSTEM 7 ROOM AND BOARD ASIDE FROM MYSELF AND THE MACHINIST WHO MADE THIS You NAVE THE HIGH MONOR TO BE THE FIRST PERSON TO SEE THE SENSATIONAL SPUPFLE PUTTER as sabotage, which generally ear- ried a penalty of 25 years, or for murder -- 10 years. Of the non-Kazakh inhabitants of Kazakhstan he estimated that 10 per cent were officials and sol- diers and the remaining 90 per cent deportees mainly from the Caucasus and Ukraine, At least 100,000 of the 120,000 inhabitants of Karaganda are deportees, he de- clared. He believed that the de- portees in the whole of Asiatie Russia far exceed 20,000,000. Kara~ ganda he described as "an entirely new town built by 40,000 German and Japanese PWs', On January 5, 1951, the Austrian PW found himself in a new camp -- at Revda near 8verdlovsk -- where he was once again with other PW officers of his own na- tionality. Here he was set to build houses. His hours of work were {from 8 to 12 and 1 to 5. But it took a further 90 minutes each way to march to and from the site, Their camp was very closely guard- ed. There were watch-towers with machine Juns and .searchlights, two barbed - wire fences, and the patrols were accompanied by dogs. He said he had never heard of anyone even frying to escape. The food he described as adequate, thanks in part to parcels supplied by the Austrian Government. On Sunday, Dec, 14, 1952, he was suddenly ordered to report to the camp medical officer for what he was told was 'a medical ex- amination'. When he arrived, how- ever, the doctor ordered him to collect his kit and to shave prior to being "transferred to another camp'. The next day, after handing in {his bedding, he and some of his comrades were taken in a green prison van to Sverdlovsk where they were told they were being sent home. Then they had to hand in' their old clothing in exchange for an entirely new outfit. They were also paid the wages due to them and were told they 'could go into the town and buy what they liked -- or could. Next morning they were put on an express train for Moscow, where for four days they were shown the sights by a special guide. Mostly they went by bus, but they were also taken for a trip on Moscow's subway. VIENNA--AGAIN From Moscow they went to Kiev, which the young Austrian deserib- ed as having been "entirely re- built since the war by 100,000 German PWs". He added that it "is a much finer city now than it was when I saw it during the in war', In Kiev a new kit again was issued to them and they had to undergo a thorough search. Those who still had any money were told they must use it to buy "anything Mey, liked" but they must not try to take even a kopeck with them. After four days in Kiev they went on to the frontier station of Cop via Lvov. This took them two days at Cop and were again search- ed before they left -- this time by normal gauge train instead of the broad Russian one. Their route took them via Budapest and they arrived im Vienna just before the end of the year. In Vienna, the Austrian Gov- ernment also issued a new kit to the returned PWs. Asked what he had done with his Russian clothes, the young ex-officer replied grim- ly: "I burnt every bit of it. Wouldn't you have done so?" Invited to say w hat he thought of the situation inside the USSR Freight Rates Hearing June 8 OTTAWA (CP) -- Onterie hear- ings in the board of transport com- missioners' Canada-wide Jnvestiga- tion en freight rate equalization will open June 8 at Windsor, the board announced today. The Ontario hearings will be combined with those of an inquiry the board is conducting into the he delcared that everyone was afriad not only of the commis- sars but of being spied upon by his own associates. He flatly con- tradieted the Soviet Government's boast that it has abolished ration- g. Speaking, of course, of the re- ions he had been in since ration- ng allegedly came to an end -- namely, Kazahstan and Sverdlovsk he said: 'Everyone has to regis- ter with a co-operative and can only buy what the co-operative issues to him. I can assure you, that is not very much. In particu- lar, flour is only issued twice a year:on May J and the anniver- sary of the Bolshevik Revolution," . ugh it goes without saying that he is glad 'to be back, he is not at all happy in Vienna which he regards as merely an island of conditional liberty surrounded by those 50,000 Soviet soldiers. He woul d like to emigrate but | he does not know where to go or what to do, He was to have been a physician, but knows that is im- possible now, He has no friends, no money, no trade. But he is free again and is quite confident that | everything will come right in the end. question of eliminating vaflwey grade-crossing hazards. The board will sit June 88 at Windsor on the two matters: at London June 10 and Hamilton June 11 on grade crossings only, and for an indefinite time starting June 18 at Toronto on the two issues, The board said rural orgpniza- tions are invited to make their submissions at the most convenient urban hearing. Investigate Theft 0f $1500 In Bills HANOVER (CP) -- Police are still investigating the theft of a registered parcel containing $1,500 in mutilated bills from a Canadian Pacific Railway express car last week. The mongy, being forwarded from a Walkerton bank to its head office, was stolen last week be- tween Walkerton and Durham. SILENT CARILLON WELLINGTON, N.Z. (CP)--En- thusiasts waited in vain to hear a scheduled recital from the big carillon here, then officials inves- tigated. The carilloneur, Selwyn Baker, was found impisoned in | a stalled elevator which had to be boken open, "Old at 40,50,607" an, You're Crazy Forget your age! Thousands are peppy at 70. Try "popping up" with Ostrex. Contains tonic for weak. rundown feeling due solely to body's lack of iron which many men and women call "old. Ostrex Tonle Tablets for pep, younger feeling, th very day, New "get acquainted" size eply 60e. For sale at all drug stores everywhere. ling" values. We're celebrating the coming holiday with "Bang - Up "sky-rocket" and inflation prices will "blow up". Take advantage of these ""sparke VALUES For the Holiday " GENUINE WAYSAGLESS SPACE-SAVER DAVENPORT Bargains! Savings will complete freedom if they did se. Of the 3,000 officers in Yelabuga camp, two responded. The rest remembered the Stalin- grad loud-speakers. : as promised before they surrend- ered at Stalingrad. They earned need doing | money "black" work for Russian civilians | in thelr spare time. 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