ustxtxb_obs_1965_10_15_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

miration, for the United States that he did not seek to conceal. He as much as admitted that his people could not get objective news of Vietnam or any other world situation. After lunch, when I sought to find an English language newspaper, he was sincerely apologetic that only the London Daily Worker was available. His tone indicated that he knew I would get little but propaganda out of that journal. Those who deride the aspirations of the Voice of America or any of our other agencies that are seeking to send information behind the curtain should make the tour we have. I sense that the people we have met, or at least some of them, want to know actual facts, not the propaganda they are fed. We went with our guide to Old Town Square, and entered a small theater. The film was a documentary, and what a documentary, of the Nazi destruction of the city of Warsaw. In October, 1944, the mad Fuehrer had decreed that Warsaw be totally destroyed, and the stupid methodical teutons had made a pictorial record of the senseless destruction of the city by way of official movies. Then, they had let the record be taken intact from their archives. The Poles know exactly what to do with it. We were shown scenes of destruction by huge flamethrowers, dynamiting, and general pillage. The fools also made pictures of the displacement of the populace and the shipping of people like cattle to concentration camps, from which they were not to return. The 700-year-old city 12 The Texas Observer of Warsaw was reduced to rubble, scarcely one brick remaining on top of another. And for what? To please the whim of a madman. There was no military value in or reason for the razing of the city. German works of architecture and art went up in flames or blasts along with those of the Poles. On leaving the movie, I thought that I had been brainwashed again ; but when the new Warsaw is looked upon, the reason for remembering what happened becomes apparent. These magnificent people deliberately determined to restore their city, not simply to rebuild it. They scratched among the rubble of Old Town to salvage even a single brick of the old structures, and they finally worked from pictures and sketches to piece things back together. It was a labor of tedium, infinite patience, and artistry. How they did it defies understanding, but somehow they did, and arose not a new Warsaw of glass and metal, but the Warsaw centuries old. Our guide was 22 at the time of victory in Europe. He was liberated from a prison camp and for the last three days of the war became a member of the Army of General Patton. We drew him out a bit on his experiences in Warsaw before he was imprisoned. The horror of the eviction of the Jews from the ghettoes is still fresh in his mind. He said he could not believe some of the things he saw. For example, a mother with an 18-month-old baby fled from a burning building and placed the child on the sidewalk, only to be shot her self. Then a Nazi soldier, not a member of the Gestapo or one of Himmler’s elite, but a plain trooper, grabbed the child by its feet and beat the side of a building with its head until it died. We have seen no German tourists here, and even after 25 years I doubt that it would be safe for them to come. Forevermore I will believe that the people of Eastern Europe passionately want peace, As the guide reminded us, Poland has been the buffer between Germany and Russia for centuries. One overran it, then the other. In this vein I indicated to him my belief that the Soviets have purposely kept East Germany weak and under the yoke because they do not want a cohesive Germany at their throats again. He agreed, but insisted that Soviet Russia is not the only power that wanted this, that Poland very well does too. We who decry the inefficiency and oppression of communism should reflect that with all its drawbacks, it has provided an external peace. How can we criticize the satellites for applauding it when we could afford them only 20 years of peace between Versailles of World War I and the falling of bombs on Warsaw in 1939, and the Red Star has given them 25 years of peace since the close of World War II? x The Cumberland Hotel, London I had hoped to learn something of the reaction of the little people, the non-party citizens of the communist countries, to their governments. I learned exactly nothing on LIBERALS COME TO MEETING-The TEXAS ORGANIZATION OF LIBERAL DEMOCRATS will hold its con stitutional convention TIME: Saturday, November 6, 1965, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. PLACE: Rice Hotel, Houston, Texas ALLALLcitizens who believe that it is time for Texans to join together to sup port liberal, progressive government for state and nation are cordially invited and urged to come. T.O.L.D. CHRIS DIXIE, Temporary Chairman For further information, contact Mrs. La tane Lambert, Temporary Secretary, 7046 Holly Hill, EM 3-6131, Dallas, Texas.