Evidence Before United Nations Quotes Nazi Equivalents As "Paradise"

Chronicle (Levin), 17 February 1949, Page 5

Evidence Before United Nations Quotes Nazi Equivalents As "Paradise"

( N.Z.P.A. —

Reuier.

Cojwright)

Received Wednesday, 7 p.m. i\EW YORK, February 15. The Ameriean Federation of Labour today laid before United Nations' Economie and Social Council, documentary evidence that millions of slave labourers are living under intolerable conditions in Russia. Misg Tony Spnder, A.F.L. representative, submitted 15 sworn statements by persons who claimed to have been vietims of the Russian forced labour progranune. She'said Russia had built labour eanips throughout the Soviet Union and there wero uj) to 1,000,000 political prisoners and other persons ifi some single camps. She demanded an impartial investigation of slave labour in Russia. . • -

A sworn statement by- Dr. Julius Margolin (now in Israel), who said he had beenvi slave labourer, claimed that conditions in the camps wero worse than the Dachau wartime Nazi liorror camp. He said : — "Conditions of life in the Soviet camps present an indescribable hell to the eyes of a European prisoner who knew Polish prisons and the German Dachau, and remembered them in the Soviet camps as a comparative para dise. ' ' Dr. Margolin's statement said prisoners worked under arined guards. Sanctions for not fulfilling work quotas wero ])iinitive htinger rations, prison and, i'or the systemalic refusal ol an appointee to work, trial witii the possibility of death sentenees. He said prisoners wero dressed in stinking rags and [irosented a pitiful sight. The death rate was high. WOMEN IN MINES. Miss Sender quoted testimonv by Esther Wilimvvska who is now a nurse in Xew York. Witnowska's statement said she was arrested in Brost-Litovsk in 19119 for not aeeepting Soviet citizenship. She was sent to work in the copper 'mines in ihe Ural Mountains. Slie and other women worked underground haufing ore in wheelbarrows. Full wheelbarrows were too heavy for the women and with the utmosi effort she was able to reaeh only 40 per cent of her assignment. The onlv food was black bread and water. Often there was a shoi'tage of bread and the prisoners then got notliing at all. RUSSIAN DENIAL. Mr. Semyon Tsaraj)kin, the Soviet delegate, denied the charges and aceused the A.F.L. and State Department of using Uoebbels' propaganda teelmique in spreading "grotesque lies and filthy slander" about Russia." He said the United States was trying to divert the attention of' tfie people from "slavery in the United States and otlier capitalistie. countries. " Mr. Tsarapkin said workers in Russia were content in the knowledge 1hat they were working for themselves and not for "capitalistic exploiters." He e.harged Ameriean employers with using brutal methods against their workers. He also attacked the Taft-Hartlev Labour Act saying it was an attempt to enslave unionists in America.

CURIOUS REASONING. Mr. Tsarapkin said there were hundreds of thousands of cases of eonvict labour in the United States. "The main difference 1 >etween eonvict labour in the United States and other eapitalistic countries and that of the Soviet Union, is that in the Soviet Union it is an educational measure and not punishment." He quoted an I.L.O. report to show that some 1^00 natives in Kenya and 29,000 in Tanganvika were forced labourers and added: "The United States has beeome an asylum for all deserters and eriminals who. after committing crimes in the Soviet Union, supply all kinds of lies and false iestimony to the A.F.L. All the dregs of society are.being used politieally by the United States against the Soviet Union. Obviously whai the United States want's is to allow Ameriean intelligenc.e agents to study something about which they feel .thev have insufficient evidence. The Soviet Union is not Turkey, Oreore or one of Ihe Marshallised countries. Tt will not allow anv AmeTic.an gauleiters.' WHY RUSSIAN SECRECY? Mr. Ohristopher Mayhew, British TTnder-Secretary of State, declared that forced labour camps » were spreading westwards "following the hammer and sickle." He asked why the camps were kept ro secret if, as the Russians claimed, there were no mass forced labour. camps but merely a

| few corrective labour camps. He 1 said : — "The inhuman practice of forced labour is now spreading beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union. We see the e "gi'owmg in Czeehosbvvakia. 111 Bulgaria and in the Soviet Zone oi Oermany. We see now that forced labour is not an exclusively Russian phenomenon. It belotigs to the practice of coriimunism in several countries. "In Uzechoslovakia no attempt is made to disguise the fact that forced labour camps now exist. 1 am not suggesting to the Council that forced labour in Czeehoslovakia has yet reached the full scale and .full liorror of forced labour in the Soviet Russia but the seed -is there and all experience suggests that the evil will grow. In Bulgaria I draw attention to the law of Xovember 1945 establishing 'labour education communities' and the law of 1946 establishing 'idlers camps.' Idlers camps are a milder form of concenlration camp involving \six month sentenees of heavy manual labour. In the Soviet Zone oi' Oermany both the concentration camps and Nazi technique have been taken over and irnproved on. Research undertaken a year ago indicated that the Oerman concentration camp population was denser than in Oermany up to 1939. There are, we have reaf,on to believe, 200.000 to 300.000 prisoners in six major and six or seven smaller camps." 'Mr. Mayhew added that Mr. Tsarapkin had failed to answer any of the specific charges against his country which. in itself. cpn stitnted an admission of guilt. The Council adjourned till tomorrow.