RUSSIANS CLOSE ZONE FRONTIER

Chronicle (Levin), 21 June 1948, Page 5

RUSSIANS CLOSE ZONE FRONTIER

LONDON, June 19. Tlie British autkqrities in Reripa h&va

started an air shuttle serviee between Britain and the Western Zone followingMhe Soviet ban on road trayel beeause of the currency reform. A spokesman said a regular sehedulp oi passenger fiights to and from Berlin would be inaugurated as sooh as extra planes arrived from Rritain. The Russians barred all nationalities from using the autobahn to Berlin, including Dutch, Swiss, and diplomatic travellers, and allowed only three Yugoslav officers to cross the border. More than 5000 German civilians and a great line of cars tonight are held up on the Russian side of the frontier at the British control post of Helmstedt, vainly trying to cross the border. Geman travellers report that the Russians concentrated tanks and armoured cars at the Russian-American Zone border near Eisenach. A Foreign Offiee spokesman said the British authorities are consuttmg French and Gnited States officials in Berlin on the Soviet decision to close the frontier between the Western and Soviet Zones of Germany. Marshal Sokolovsky is understood to have aceepted the advice of the German Economic Council in the Soviet Zone, to postpone currency reform in East Germany until the political position in Berlin has been clarified. The German Peoples' Council, which is the executive bodv of the Communist led Peoples' Congress, and is regarded as the shadow government for a possihle East German State, has denounced the currency reform and called it "the rape of Germany." Russian troops with fixed bayonets cordoned off several printing plants in the Soviet sector and also cordoned off streets surrounding the offices of tho Taegliche Runschau, the official SovietGerman language newspaper, and ro fqsed to allow anyone to approach the building. The British eontrolled GermanjT news agency said the Taegliche. Rundschau plant was printing speeial' stamps to affix to reiclimarks in the Soviet Zone. Unoffieial reports from the Soviet Zone said district finance officers vvere stamping reiclimarks with a special sign to make them the only legal eur rencv in the Eastern Zone. This would counteract the ehances of the Zone being ilooded with old worthless reiclimarks from tlie West.