HOPES THAT FADED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 July 1943, Page 4

HOPES THAT FADED

• GERMANS IN THE KUBAN. RICH FIELDS AGAIN TILLED BY RUSSIANS. Tractors are roaring into the fields of the Kuban. Last autumn the farmers drove them into out-of-the-way hamlets, where they were hidden from the Germans, says “Soviet War News.” Schools, clubs, hospitals, post offices and shops have been reopened. Small factories are beginning to hum. Before the German fires had been put out in Krasnodar, the radio spoke out: for the first time in six months the people heard the voice of Moscow. The workers come back to the towns with the Red Army. Maikop is putting its streets in order, is repairing houses. The first stores and barbers’ shops have been opened. The children are back at school. The Maikop oil workers, back from service with the guerilla detachments, 'are getting the wells into working order. The same is happening at Apsheronskaya, Neftegorsk and Khaayzhenskaya. What the German “technical brigades for the extraction of mineral fuel” failed to do in months, is being done in days. The Germans did their best to ruin the collective farms of the Kuban. Grain, cattle and food were shipped to Germany. When the farms had been picked clean, the “(agricultural officers” proceeded to ransack the collective farmers’ homes. The Germans intended to make the Kuban their eastern granary. The German gentry, twentieth century slave-owners, were to “colonise” the area One soldier wrote to his family in Germany:. “Many of us will receive quite handsome allotments of black soil in the Kuban. Here one Cossack and one horse adds up to two horsepower.” The first “colonists” from eastern Prussia were expected to arrive in the spring. There is a magnificent solemnity about the Kuban in these days, as to the far thunder of the guns the people wipe out the traces of German occupation, to return to a rich and happy life. Holy and blessed is life-building toil.