Servant Problem

Missing from the prisoners' dock at Minsk's war-crimes trial was a notable offender--Wilhelm Kube, Commissioner General of Byelorussia during the German occupation. Last week's testimony told why.

Anita Kube, his blond wife, had bragged all over Minsk about her household staff of a dozen servants. "Twelve Russian swine," she was fond of repeating, in her arrogant Nazi way, "are cheaper than one good German maid."

One of Frau Kube's twelve swine was a brown-haired, blue-eyed girl named Galya Mazanik. In the chamber where Commissioner Kube slept alone, innocent-looking Galya planted a mine one September evening in 1943. It was a dud. Back she went, this time tossed in a hand grenade. It worked.

Coolly Galya walked out of the house, explaining to the sentry that she was going for a doctor. At the curb, fellow guerrillas were waiting in a car. Today Galya is a Hero of the Soviet Union.

Widow Kube returned to Germany.

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