WEST BERLIN ASKS FOR REMOVAL OF SOVIET POLICE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22954, 24 May 1949, Page 5

WEST BERLIN ASKS FOR REMOVAL OF SOVIET POLICE

(10 a.m.) BERLIN, May 23. The Western commandants of Berlin are studying a formal request from the West Berlin City Council asking the Western authorities to order the Russian-sector railway police from the West sector railway stationsBerlin’s Deputy Lord Mayor, Dr. Friendensburg, has officially protested to the Allied Kommandatura against the use of firearms by Soviet-con-trolled railway police on the West sector railway stations. He protested that firing by the railway police had caused a number of casualties among civilians who were not strikers.

The American commandant, Briga-dier-General Frank Howley, this month’s chairman of the Kommandatura, said the situation had become intolerable.

“It is no longer a matter between the Soviet-controlled railway management and workers,” he said. “The management has used armed police as strike-breakers.” The head of the strikers’ union, Herr Christian Hanebuth, said that his men would resist the Communist strikebreakers until their demands were met.

“We cannot fight without guns but we will resist every move they make,” he said.

The British licensed newspaper Western Powers, Montags Zeitung, declared that the Western Powers, at the Paris conference of Foreign Ministers must either require Russia to disband the Eastern German “people’s police" or strongly arm Germans west of the Soviet sphere. The newspaper said the Eastern police, by shooting civilians, had proved “they are a civil war army.” Meanwhile, all Berlin’s elevated railways are still paralysed. The railway riots expose the abnormal and explosive character of the present conditions in the city, says the Times correspondent in Berlin. The Soviet-controlled railway management has the right to send its own police anywhere on railway property and the railway police are doing their duty against fellow Germans without much taste for it. The situation has been made worse by the railway directorate. bringing the “people’s police”, from the Russian zone. This body is a schooled and disciplined Communist instrument, at least partly recruited from members of General von Pauliis’ Army which surrendered at Stalingrad. There is no question where Berliners’ sympathies lie. They accepted good humouredly the inconveniences caused by the'railway disruption and are using emergency lorry services. The Daily Herald's correspondent in Berlin points out that thousands of Western zone railway workers have a strong case in demanding payment of wages in Western marks. The railway administration has continued to pay its workers in Eastern marks which are one-quarter in value of the Western mark with the result that life has become impossible for the railway workers and the strikers are better off financially than if they are ‘working. They, receive unemployment pay in Western marks which is higher than their wages in Eastern marks.