SLOW RECOVERY OF RUSSIAN TOWN

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 6, 2 October 1943, Page 5

SLOW RECOVERY OF RUSSIAN TOWN

Observer’s Visit To Orel NEW YORK, August 20. In a dispatch from the newlyliberated Russian city of Orel, the correspondent of the “New York Times,’ Alexander Werth, writes: What looked like the sunset in the west at dusk yesterday lasted tjirough the night. A young officer who had taken part in the whole Orel offensive remarked bitterly, “The parasites are illuminating in honour of our victory. “Parasites” is what the Russian soldiers call the Germans when they are really angry. ■ The illumination meant that oO miles away the Germans had set Are to Karachev and the adjacent villages they were abandoning. Here in Orel the people are gradually recovering from the terrible ordeal of the two-year occupation and the destruction caused by the Germans in the last few days. It will be a long recovery. The lives lost can never be replaced and there are thousands of families with infinite anxiety in their hearts for their sons and daughters who have been deported to Germany and into the German rear, especially during the, last few mouths of German occupation The old monuments are another of the things that cannot be restored, and still less the old-time charm of towns like Orel and Mtsensk, full of memories of Leskov and Turgemev. who lived, and wrote there. Biit what can be quickly restored will be restored and much is being done already. ■ With the fantastic inconsistency that marks the “new order” everywhere,, the Germans have been trying especially during the last year, when their chances of winning the war no longer were so certain, to play a double game, even, m Kharkov —terrorize and murder with one hand and seek co-operation with the other. Some of their experiments in “re-education” read like the records ot a lunatic asylum. . The Germans scrapped all foimei education. Instead they set up three forms of schools. Those that interested them least were the ordinary schools for children. In effect, -there were only two or three year schools for 7 to 9-year-olds, who were taught the elements of reading and arithmetic. No German was taught to them. The teaching was sporadic Most of the time these schools were not open and the childrm lived from hand to mouth doiyg odd jobs for the German soldiery to earn a little food. The onlj books were old Soviet ones from which nearly everything was deleted relating to the Russian story. Sought Manpower.

The second type of school was for adults—to train Russian spies working for Germany. They were run by the Gestapo and the “pupils” were composed of various criminal or shady elements brought from elsewhere. Much more interesting was the crea-. tion of so-called industrial schools. J-hese tried to recruit healthy strong boys, lhe inducement was better food than the rest of the population got. These. schools were essentially military training colleges. The Germans were certainly makin" a serious attempt to raise some manpower in Rusisa. especially in the last year, after the Stalingrad disaster 'and the virtual collapse of all the German allies <>n this front. . Suddenly inducements were being olUted to prisoners of war and these training schools were part of the same scheme. There were so-called “courses of ideological re-education” for’ the benefit of the pupils of the “industrial'’ schools, and also for prospective teachers in the elementary schools. In Orel there were actually only twenty or twenty-two such re-trained teachers —all people who come from nobody knew where. , The leading light in all this “ideological re-education” activity was a suspect individual called Michael Oktan of indefinite nationality, who spoke doubtful Russian. He lectured on subjects like “the revision of the Russian's’ historical past,” in which he contended that Russian culture was non-existent, Russian music was nothing and everything was Wagner because he was Adolf Hitler s favourite composer. In the library .most of the Russian classics were destroyed, notably Tolstoy’s "War and Peace,” and nnv other books giving the people patriotic emotions. Oktan tried to prove to the .prospective..teachers...Uial_th£_Jßus-

sians are essentially unereative people whose natural function is to be slaves to Germany’s Herrenvolk, . . Oktan also lectured on the superiority of the “Aryan” race. In Orel Province,, there were a number of German colonists whose families had lived there foe several generations. They were forcibly taken off to Lodz, where they were to go through a test as to whether they were good Nordic “Aryans,” after which they would be settled in western Poland. They did not like the idea at all. One of the men joyfully returned from Lodz. He said he had failed in his “Aryan” blood test, had been recognized as of Slay, blood, and had therefore been sent back to Orel. Talk with Priest. A peculiar insight into one aspect of German policy in the occupied part ofl Russia was provided the other day by a conversation with Father Maccaveyev, a 73-year-old former village priest with a’ long white beard, white hair, black robes, and a large silver cross. He is a kindlyold man, but in his eyes was the shrewd,! sly twinkle of an intelligent, wily Rus- 1 sian peasant. i For some time after the German occu«j pation of Orel he had been head of the. Eparchial, or clerical council, set up, na said, “on the initiative of the faithful.’! Father Maccaveyev had not always gotj along very well with the Soviet author!! ties, and he said that since 1929 he had,’ “for personal and other reasons you may! know,” abandoned active priesthood, so) that when the Germans came to Orel he] was willing to give co-operation a try* out. J But fundamentally the old man was aJj patriotic Russian and both this and th® general attitude of the congregations oE the five Orel churches, which were open! during the German occupation, displeased! the Germans considerably. They realize® before long that the churches had become,!] as it were, rallying points for patriotic' Russians and about the only places where they could meet and exchange news and; information in whispers with relative- 1 safety. . Father Maccaveyev even claimed tli&j churches had become nuclei of the na-fl tional movement of resistance. Neverthe-j less, for special reasons, of their own, the, Germans hesitated to close the churches! specially since a number of priests, not*; ably one Father Kutepov, were co-opew ating in every respect with the Germans.; But the Germans decided it was essen-i tial to have the fullest possible control of the churches, and in August, 1942, .thev disbanded the church council, depriving it of its seals, which were to be handed over to one Konstantivoffi, a civilian functionary who was an agent oj the Gestapo. I asked him for whose victory he usedto pray—was it for the (Russian Army: or for Hitler’s army? With a sly, toothj less grin, he said: “We used to pray tOEj ‘Christ’s beloved soldiers.’ The Germans, could take it any way they liked, and’ they preferred not to ask what we meant by it.” Father Maccaveyev was an old. nian. and not heroically inclined.. He said was necessary for the Russians in many, eases to co-operate with the Germans for, two profound reasons—hunger and the! instinct of self-preservation. He emphasized that the churches had unques-j tionably saved many lives and relieved) much desperate hardship because to every; church was attached a charitable insti-| tution through which the Russians were able from their meagre resources to help, one another. . .... .. Apart from such activities thiougto the churches and other examples or. short-term velvet-glove policy, the whole, story of the German occupation of Ore/* is oiie of horror, hunger and oppression.-