Silence Is Suicide

In Germany's Soviet-occupied zone, one morning last week, a Dr. Becker settled himself at his big desk to open his mail. On top of the pile was a blank sheet, marked with a single big F. That same day, in the seaside town of Rostock, the sidewalks were strewn with Fs torn from the newspapers. In Leipzig, Weimar, Potsdam and the Soviet sector of Berlin, white, chalked Fs appeared on the shells of bombed-out buildings. The F stood for Freiheit--freedom from Soviet terror.

The fervent, forceful man who started this campaign of passive resistance is Rainer Hildebrandt, a 34-year-old German free-lance writer. Sitting in his faded Berlin apartment, Hildebrandt last week explained his purpose: "The Russians will see an F and know that people still have courage to speak up for human decency. German Spitzel [informers] will find the mark on their homes and will wonder whether the Red arm of the MVD is really long enough to protect them. Ordinary citizens, seeing an F, will know they are not alone, that there is more to be done against inhumanity than simply to cower and grovel."

Catalogue of Horrors. As a youth, Hildebrandt fought against the Nazis, spent 17 months as a prisoner of the

Gestapo. Many Germans, he realized even then, shared passively in Nazi guilt by shutting their eyes to evil or by keeping silent about it. After the war, as he heard of the new wave of totalitarian terror sweeping the Soviet zone, he decided that "silence is suicide." For months he begged refugees from Soviet-zone concentration camps to stand up and tell their story. Last winter he found one man and one woman who were willing to take the risk. With them, he staged a deeply impressive public meeting. Out of it emerged his organization, the Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit (Fighters Against Inhumanity).

Staffed by a few volunteers, the Kampfgruppe set up shop in Hildebrandt's home. Daily 40 to 60 visitors came to contribute their knowledge of Communist inhumanity. The Kampfgruppe released to the press detailed accounts of life and suffering in Communist concentration camps. The catalogue of horrors soon served another purpose. From inmates who were released or had escaped, Hildebrandt obtained names of people who had died or were still held in Soviet-zone prisons, tried to inform their relatives.

Hildebrandt now has a card index of 12,000 of the estimated quarter-million men, women & children who have "disappeared" in eastern Germany since 1945. In another file he keeps 7,000 requests for information on people who have "disappeared."

Confidence & Conviction. Berlin's Western Military Government officials, who first dubbed Hildebrandt a "madman and fanatic," now call him "one of the few people around here who really does something." Communists curse the Kampfgruppe as an "Anglo-American espionage center," occasionally send their agents to try to gain Hildebrandt's confidence.

Hildebrandt's eyes shine with confidence and conviction: "The Russians throw everyone they suspect into a concentration camp. We don't need to do that. As long as we know the enemy, we are not worried. Our side is stronger. Eventually, the Russians will see they can get nothing more from Germany but trouble. They will go. Until then, we will fight them. Not with sabotage--the Soviet system sabotages itself--but with the collection and spread of information, with passive resistance, with the 'F for Freedom.' If you are against inhumanity, you must fight it."

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