Red-Star-Cross'd Lovers

Guenther Wolf and his blonde girl, Luise, are as dead as Romeo and Juliet, and because of a split between their families. But, for the world, the real tragedy in the story of Guenther and Luise is that the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen and Fuenfeichen are operating again.

Guenther Wolf, 19, was a premedical student in Berlin. He lived with his mother in a small flat in the French sector. His father was still a war prisoner in Russia. At the university, Guenther belonged to the anti-Communist Social Democratic Party, but he made no speeches, attended few meetings. He helped at home, worked at his studies, and saw his girl, Luise.

Luise's father was a minor official in the Communist-dominated Socialist Unity Party. He hated antiCommunists. When he learned that Guenther had joined the Social Democrats, he ordered the student from his house.

Two weeks ago, in response to a phone call asking him to visit an acquaintance, Guenther went to the Soviet sector of Berlin. As he stepped from the subway station, he was taken into custody by the MVD (Soviet secret police). En route to an interrogation, his captors' car broke down and Guenther escaped.

"Of Death & Night." The next day he reported the incident to his local Social Democratic unit. He was sent to Social Democratic headquarters, where there is a special division to handle problems such as his. After his interview, Guenther received a threatening letter from the Soviet sector, then another, and another. Frightened and depressed, he went back to his own party headquarters for a longer inter view. He was told that he was in danger, that if the Soviet authorities got their hands on him again he would wind up in one of Eastern Germany's Russian-operated concentration camps. Arrangements were made to send him out of Berlin.

At first, Guenther was elated. Then he thought of Luise, of his career--and of the camps. He made his decision, pocketed a poison, and went to see his forbidden sweetheart. Shortly after nightfall in the woods at suburban Spindlersfeld, police found Guenther and Luise, arms around each other, dead.

"On Pain of Torture." In the Soviet zone of Germany today, there are 16 concentration camps, containing probably from 250,000 to 300,000 prisoners (in all Germany, SHAEF estimated in 1944, the total concentration camp population was 500,000). Of the present prisoners, roughly a fifth are war criminals, men of the SS and the Gestapo. Another two-fifths are thieves and racketeers. The remainder are political prisoners, accused of making anti-Soviet statements, of espionage, and of participation in organizations such as the Social Democratic party which are forbidden in the Soviet zone.

Prisoners who have escaped to the Western zones tell of brutal interrogations and beatings with the Gummiknueppel (a rubber truncheon), of the cold-water treatment and of consignment to the "bunker," a deep, narrow hole in the ground, in which the prisoner is forced to stand in his own filth. They tell of labor battalions, where the strong earn extra rations and the weak work until they die.

In the tale of 14th Century Verona, the star-cross'd lovers' sacrifice united the feuding groups. In the tale of 20th Century Berlin, there was no such promise.

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