LIFE IN BERLIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25853, 25 May 1945, Page 5

LIFE IN BERLIN

RETURNING TO NORMAL LONDON, May 23.

Most Berliners who left the capital during the battle of Berlin have returned, states Mosco.v radio, Towns in Northern Germany are becoming normal. Some are even looking as though they have been untouched by war, adds the radio. Stettin, Swinemunde, Rostock, and Stralgund, which were battlefields only a few weeks ago, are now under German administration working under Russian supervision. Stettin has had its first copy of a German paper, in which an old inhabitant had written: “ Our people can live. The victorious Powers have refrained from preparing for us a fate similar to that which Hitler, in his lust for destruction, had planned for other nations. We must help ourselves.”

Reuter’s Moscow correspondent reports that the Russians have built a victory arch decorated with Russian, British, and American flags in the Frankfurter Allee, along which the first Soviet units entered Berlin. The Russians also erected a tribune in Charlottenburg to display portraits of Marshal Stalin, Mr Churchill, and President Roosevelt. Above the tribune fly the flags of the three Allies and the emblems of the 11 European States which were under German occupation during the war. Berlin’s variety theatre has been reopened, and a Russian film is being shown in the cinema opposite.

“TERRIBLE HERITAGE” (Rec. 11.30 p.m.) LONDON, May 24. " Everything that was destroyed by the Germans on Hitler’s orders must be made good by us,” said the Deputy Mayor of Berlin, Karl Maron, in a broadcast. “Itis a terrible heritage. This city is largely paralysed and many years will pass before all that has been destroyed can be replaced, and before the name of Germany ceases to be odious to the world. “ But where there is a will to do honest, peaceful, progressive work there is a way. These tasks determine the composition of the new Berlin City Council, which contains simple workmen, high Government officials, and world-famed scientists. Many districts of Berlin would not have been provided with water and electricity, and underground trains would not be running, if the Red Army had not helped so intensively.”