STRIKE AGAINST SOVIET ACTlON‘Battle Of The Trains’ In Berlin: Civil War Attempt Alleged

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 May 1949, Page 5

STRIKE AGAINST SOVIET ACTlON—‘Battle Of The Trains’ In Berlin: Civil War Attempt Alleged

BERLIN, May 22 (Rec 11 a.m.). —Acts of violence continued to take place at Berlin’s railway stations today in the second day of the “battle of the trains,” as anti-Communist railwaymen continued their strike to enforce their demands that the Soviet should pay them in Western, instead of Eastern, marks. Western Berlin police headquarters announced that during today’s clashes 12 strikers and other citizens were wounded by shots. Twenty-eight railway police have been injured in the fighting with the strikers since the strike began, according to Soviet-controlled railway headquarters. Ernest Scharnowski, leader of the anti-Communist independent trade unions, described today’s events “an attempt by the Communists to start a civil war.” He said: “If these acts of violence continue, the Communists may get an answer they do not expect. If necessary, the trade unions will call a general strike throughout Berlin including the Soviet sector.”

A crowd of several hundred Germans outside the Berlin zoo station stoned 40 Russian officers today. Western sector police quickly intervened and stopped the incident. Five thousand abusive strikers and sympathisers surrounded Berlin’s big Charlottenburg station and charged Eastern sector police. Although one of the strikers was shot in the hand, the strikers linked arms and drove 150 railway police out of the station. When Western sector police arrived on the scene, 15 Eastern sector police voluntarily surrendered their arms, saying, “We don’t want to shoot Germans.”

Order Restored

After restoring order, the Western police handed the station back to the Eastern sector authorities, who, under the four-Power agreement, are in sole charge of Charlottenburg. After a further clash between the strikers and railway police, however, the British-controlled German police marched into Charlottenburg, occupied it and remained in control with the strikers and railway police reassembling at a distance on both sides.

Four hundred strikers who attacked a transformer installation near the Westkreuz station in the British sector w r ere repulsed by fire from police barricaded inside the building. A force of 50 Eastern sector police, who were attempting to clear the railway lines from the Russian sector border to the Westkreuz station, seven stations away, was surrounded by about 1000 strikers. After the crowd had hurled stones, the police opened fire and scattered the mob.

pying Powers are refraining from openly interfering in the strike, although Russian officers, ip an effort to get the railway system working, are appearing at points on the railways in the West sectors. The British and American military police are standing by day'and night in readiness to intervene if the situation gets fully out of control of the German police. The Soviet-controlled police fired shots many times today when they met resistance when trying to -take charge of the railway stations in the Western half of the city.