AN EAST GERMAN PRISON I-TUBERCULOSIS

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27443, 1 September 1954, Page 10

AN EAST GERMAN PRISON I-TUBERCULOSIS

rrh. of those articles in the “Manchester Guardian” is a youna univtrMu rtudeif“iJhS Sas a "ertld in M5O /or “anti-Soeiet” actiu.lv and release! this vear.l (Reprinted by Arrangement)

Bautzen prison, some 30 miles east of Dresden, was built at the beginning of the present.century, and, apart from the high walls, the barbed wire, and the observation towers, it makes a rather pleasant impression with its scattered buildings, its' fine woodlands, and its many vegetable beds and lawns. The walls and most of the buildings are of yellow brick, so that the prison is commonly known as the Yellow Misery.” The outer wall is 16 feet high, with barbed wire and observation towers along the top. In two of the towers there are machine guns. Inside the wall are three barbed wire fences, five feet apart; the middle one is electrified. The environment of tne prison is a prohibited area which may only be entered with a special permit. The prison was built for 1100 to 1200 prisoners. At the end of 1950 it contained 6500. The maximum number of prisoners during the period of Russian administration was over 8000. Between 1950 and the end of 1952 the prisohers were distributed as follows: Building 1 (a cruciform block), 4100 inmates. This building had nine storeys with cells and six halls. The halls held on the average 380 men; the cells, intended for one man, held four. Building 2, with three halls and two storeys containing cells, held 800 tuberculosis cases and convalescents. Building 3 held 500 men with advanced tuberculosis, in two halls and two corridors of cells. Inner barracks contained 300 cases of advanced tuberculosis; outer barracks contained 800 elderly or seriously injured prisoners: the infirmary averaged 100 patients. The remaining buildings contained only; workshops and workrooms. At the end of 1952 there began a process of reduction of congestion, in the course of which many prisoners were transferred elsewhere. Prisoners and Crimes The prisoners came from all parts of Germany—about 20 per cent from West Germany, the rest from the Eastern zone or from the lost eastern territories. Foreign nationals were generally sent to Russia, so that there were very few foreigners in Bautzen. Twenty-five per cent, of the prisoners were of or under 25 years of age. The youngest prisoner 1 met had been arrested at 13 years of age for possessing a weapon; he had been sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment The oldest prisoner had been sentenced by a German court to six years’ imprisonment when he was 84 years of age; he had been found guilty of purchasing gramophone needles in West Berlin and selling them in East Germany. I myself had been condemned to 25 years for “political espionage” and to 25 years for “anti-Soviet” nropaganda. The people in the prison were of all sorts and kinds. Alongside former members of the S.S. and police were spies, members of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union considered troublesome, persons who had stolen Russian property, a large number of men whose only crime had been to have their own view on political issues and not keep it to themselves. There were also those who had tried to protect a German woman from the attentions of Russian soldiers. Some 60 per cent, of the prisoners had been convicted under Article 58 of the Soviet penal code, which deals with “counterrevolutionary crimes”—that is to say, espionage, suspected espionage, complicity, assistance in espionage, sabo-

tage, the forming of illegal groupg, anti-Soviet propaganda, and so on. Very few of the prisoners had been really active opponents of the regime; most of them had been convicted for the veriest trifles. I had expected to find in Bautzen a circle of thinking persons interested in political questions, but I found very few indeed. There is quite a considerable percentage of bigoted Nazis, whose contention that things were better in the Third Reich unfortunately wins over very many, especially among the younger prisoners. Some 75 to 80 per cent, of the prisoners have sentences of 25 years or more; the rest have 20, 15, or 10year sentences. The Soviet authorities gave sentences of less than 10 yeaii only in a few exceptional cases. In 1951, however, most of the Soviet military tribunals were dissolved and authority given to East German courts. In 1952 the first men convicted by the German courts began to come to Bautzen. The sentences were all shorter.

20,000 Dead Apart from the ever-present sense of the injustice of the long term of imprisonment, the two worst evils in Bautzen are hunger and tuberculosis. Between 1946 and the end of 1952 some 28,000 men came to Bautzen; those remaining, together with those transferred elsewhere and the internees released in January, 1950, totalled about 8000. Twenty • thousand dead! Most of them werft victims of tuberculosis, especially ot the lungs. The reasons were the disastrous food conditions until the end of 1951, the insufficient medical treatment, and the unimaginably foul air in the overcrowded prison. The cells, intended for one occupant,, had four. Still worse was the condition of the halls. Measuring 100 feet by 40 by 15, they are almost filled by great two-storey stacks of bunks, and they housed 350 to 420 men. The maximum mortality in the prison, in the summer of 1948, reached 40 to 45. a day. Relatives were not informed. Not till a late stage in their illness were the tuberculous isolated from tho rest; they then received better food. Lungs were X-rayed every three months. Nothing was done to reduce the incidence or tuberculosis by better feeding and reduction of overcrowding? but at least the sick were segre- ’ gated.

Many of the prison doctors did their duty with selfless devotion. There was no great improvement, however, until after the transfer of the prison to the police of the East Zone. Rather more medicine was then to be -had, so that there came a considerable decline in mortality; but even the gravely ill were still treated as criminals. In 1951, in midwinter, 185 sufferers in Building 2 were punished by being made to stand for an hour in the open in intensely cold weather.. After the hunger demonstration of March 31, 1950, when many despairing meh, weak from semistarvation, were beaten with rubber cudgels till , they were half-dead, a body of warders burst into Building 3. where were the cases •of advanced tuberculosis. The doctors tried to stop the men at the entrances to the halls, protesting that the inmates were all gravely ill, but the warders brushed them aside and mercilessly beat the patients, some of whom were lying in plaster. (To be concluded)