Cleveland Visit

Up to Cleveland's Public Hall last week rolled three chartered busses behind a shrieking police escort. Out piled 57 suntanned, knickered German boys, 43 demure German girls and four solemn teachers. They had come all the way from Berlin to spend six weeks in Cleveland's public schools. Blinking at photographers and staring at reporters, the educational mission, ranging in age from 12 to 18, filed into Public Hall to be greeted by Cleveland's boyish Mayor Harold Hitz Burton. At the door an unidentified young man created the first untoward incident, by handing out broadsheets which read: "The next six weeks will undoubtedly be the freest weeks which you will have had. Make the most of them."

Beaming were the three Clevelanders who have been working more than a year to arrange the extraordinary excursion. Cleveland Lawyer Otto L. Fricke persuaded Berlin's Board of Education to select 100 likely youngsters who knew English. Mrs. Henry Gerstenberger, wife of a Cleveland pediatrician, rounded up 100 Cleveland families to act as hosts, send their own sons or daughters back with their guests for six weeks of school in Germany.

Mayor Burton, well aware that his electorate includes not only 100,000 Germans but 10,.000 Jews, begged the visitors "to refrain completely from every act. expression, or conduct that could be offensive to those of differing views." Chairman Robert A. Good of the Mayor's Reception Committee hopped up, asked what the guests would like to do "for the dignity arid honor of your country." They rose, stretched out their arms in a Nazi salute, sang Dentschland Uber Alles and the Horst Wessel.

Next day when the party split to attend Cleveland's high schools they found that the Board of Education had at the last moment passed a resolution admitting them to classes only as "visitors." Since few teachers knew how to interpret this ruling, a number of the visitors spent their time downtown at movies and drug stores. One German girl, however, visiting a class where no one could adequately identify Benjamin Franklin, rose and did so. At Lakewood High School, Student Marygold McCauley, 17, caused a stir by writing to the school Times that "all who welcomed the German students unfortunately do not understand the grave significance of this issue."

No one was certain just what Cleveland's experiment would develop beside mutual embarrassment. Of this there was plenty, most of all when Cleveland hostesses had to hide the newspapers from their young guests one morning. In Cleveland to raise $279,000 for a Jewish Welfare Fund to aid Jews in Germany, Great Britain's outspoken Laborite peer, Lord Marley had heard of the plan, snorted for publication: "Every German exchange student is a Nazi propagandist.''

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