Federation Of Labour In U.S.A. Produces Sworn Testimony As To Slave Camps In Russia

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 February 1949, Page 5

Federation Of Labour In U.S.A. Produces Sworn Testimony As To Slave Camps In Russia

Conditions Said To Be Worse Even Than In The Notorious German Dachau (N.Z.P.A.— Copyright.) NEW YORK, Feb. 15 (Rec. 6 pm).—The American Federation of Labour today laid before the United Nations Economic and Social Council documentary evidence that millions of slave labourers are living under intolerable conditions in Russia.

Miss Tony Sender, an A.F.L. representative, submitted 15 sworn statements by persons who claimed to have been victims of the Russian forced labour programme. She said Russia had built labour camps throughout the Soviet. Union and there were up to 1,000,000 political prisoners and other persons in some single camps. She demanded an impartial investigation of slave labour in Russia. DOCTOR WAS A SLAVE In a sworn statement, Dr. Julius Margolin (now in Israel) said he had been a slave labourer. He claimed that conditions in the camps were worse than the Dachau wartime Nazi horror camp. He said: “Conditions of life in the Soviet camps at present ar e an indescribable hell to the eyes of a Europan. Prisoners who knew Polish prisons and the German Dachau remembered them in Soviet camps as a comparative paradise." Dr. Margolin’s statement said prisoners worked under armed guards and sanctions for not fulfilling work quoteas were punitive hunger rations, prison and, for systematic refusal of appointed work, trial, with the possibility of death sentences. He said prisoners were dressed in stinking rags and presented a pitiful sight. Th e deathrate was high. WOMEN IN COPPER MINES Miss Sender quoted testimony by Esther Witnowska, who is now a nurse in New York. Witnowska’s statement said she was arrested in Brest-Litovsk in 1939 for not accepting Soviet citzenship. She was sent to work in copper mines in the Ural Mountains. She and other women worked underground, hauling or e in wheelbarrows. Full wheelbarrows were too heavy for women and with the utmost effort sh e was able to reach only 40 per cent, of her assignment. The only food was black bread and water. Often there was a shortage of breed and the prisoners then got nothing at all. Mr Semyon Tsarapkin, Soviet delegate, denied the charges and accused the American Federation of Labour and the State Department of using Goebbels' propaganda technique in spreading “grotesque lies and filthy slander” about Russia. He said the United States was trying to divert attention of people from the “slavery in the United States and other capitalistic countries.” Mr Tsarapkin said workers in Russia were content in the knowledge that they were working for themselves and not for “capitalistic exploiters.” He charged American employers with using brutal methods against their workers. He also attacked the Taft-Hartley Labour Act, saying it was an attempt to enslave unionists in America. Mr Tsarapkin said there were hundreds of thousands of cases of convict labour in the United States. “The main difference between convict labour in the United States and

other capitalistic countries and that of the Soviet Union is that in the Soviet Union it is an educational measure and not punishment.” he said. He quoted an International Labour Organisation report to show that some 1800 natives in Kenya ana 29,000 in Tanganyika were forced labourers. He added: “The United States has become an asylum for all deserters and criminals, who, after committing crimes in th e Soviet Union, supply all kinds of lies and false testimony to the A F.L. All the dregs of society are being used politically by the United States against the Soviet Union. Obviously, what the United States wants is to allow American intelligence agents to study something about which they feel tltey have insufficient evidence. The Soviet Union is not Turkey, Greece, or one of the Marshalised countries. It will not allow any American gauleiters."

FORCED LABOUR SPREADING Mr Christopher Mayhew, British Under-Secretary of State, declared that forced labour camps were spreading westwards, “following the hammer and sickle.”

He asked why the camps were kept so secret if, as the Russians claimed, there were no mass forced labour camps but merely a few corrective labour camps. H e said: “The inhuman practice of forced labour is now spreading beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union. We see the evil growing in Czechoslovakia, in Bulgaria and in the Soviet zone of Germany, We see now that forced labour is not an exclusively Russian phenomenon. It belongs to the practice of Communism in several countries.”

“In Czechoslovakia nc attempt is made to disguise the fac; that forced labour camps now exist,” Mr. Mayhew continued. “I am not suggesting to the council that forced labour in Czechoslovakia has yet reacheds its full scale and the full horror of forced labour in Soviet Ru ;sia, but the seed is there and all experience suggests the evil will grow. In Bulgaria I draw attention to the law of November, 1945, establishing ‘labour education communities,’ and the law of 1946, establishing ‘idlers camps.’ Idlers camps are a milder form of concentration camp involving six months sentences of heavy manual labour.

“In the Soviet zone of Germany bo.th concentration camps and Nazi technique have been taken over and improved on. Research undertaken a year ago indicated that the German concentration camp population was denser than in Germany up to 1939. There are, we have reason to believe, 200,000 to 300,000 prisoners in six major and six or seven smaller camps.” Mr. Mayhew added that Mr. Tsarapkin had failed to answer any of the specific charges against his country, which in itself constituted an admission of guilt. The council adjourned till tomorrow.