AN APPEAL TO THE CONSCIENCE OF THE WORLD
Rouset, David
An Appeal to the Conscience of the World By DAVID ROUSSET PARIS. IADDRESS THIS appeal to the conscience of all free men. During the last five years there have been increasing numhers of...
...Rudek, from Tarnapol, walked about a dozen yards from the place of work to pick a few berries...
...Rumania...
...As in the German camps...
...was a sd/ies of last names—Conant, Dodds, otc-without further idoatiiical.jn...
...Here again the inmate of the concentration camp supports his guardian...
...It is in this sense that the world of the concentration camp develops like a cancer within society, corrupting the executioner along vvith the victim...
...This is a faithful condensation of hundreds of reports—and thousands of such reports exist...
...Before formal charges were preferred, prisoners were beaten with riilo butts, kicked, dragged through mud or snow, and set upon by dogs...
...Upcoming Ayer reports will show that U. S. press has highest circulation in its history—52,271,000...
...hrael Speaks, bi-weekly dealing with affairs in Israel, is publishing a series on problems of newcomers to the country written by Richard Yaiie, iormerly ioreign editor oi PM and the New York Star...
...and Magadan ruling / the rich Kolyma Basin...
...Germans, Jews, Central Europeans, Spaniards...
...Sev-i eral squares form a diuision;severa| divisions a region...
...Hospital treatment consisted of a drop of potassium permaaganate for each pottMt...
...Under the pressures of the war and its aftermath, non-Russian nationals were deported into Russia by the thousands and then Ireed...
...fi> j The world of the concentJ^,^^ camp keeps growing...
...This is not a problem'for the average undernourished prisoner...
...the guard came nearer and finished him off with another shot...
...The 392 a. m. papers have 20,151,000 and the 1,498 p. m. papers have 30,911,000...
...One had to jump on the bandwagon— regardless of one'^ innermost convictions—or be left behind...
...The Russians also have special trains for prisoners, old passenger cars transformed by blinding the windows and replacing partitions with iron gates, so that the guards in the passage may watch their cargo...
...Timber would fall on workers who, waist deep in snow, could not avoid being crushed...
...Yaffe ia not a Red-baiter, anymore than Victor Bernstein, presa relations chlei ior the Jewish Agency and iormer editor oi PM and the Star is a Red-baiter, anymore than Mllly Hollander, iormer aecretiry to Ralph Ingersoll and now secretary to Israeli Foreign Minister Sharett, is a Red-baiter...
...Like the Germans, they have a transport system involving all the hprrors which we know so well—the platform with frozen bellies and feet, the stench in the ships' holds, the masses of men dying on top of their excrements...
...Rarest anl the sanitary camps, where meiin^ restored to working ability, an which offer the best standard c existence...
...Sunday circulation is 44,730,000...
...As these victims triclcled West, a grotesque landscape of concentration camps was unveiled...
...They roported ho had been interested and that, in a real sense, an agreement hud already l^een reached...
...Frances Gunther likes Jerusalem so much she has purchased a home there for permanent residence...
...Boszcynski, about 25 years old, in tho 13th division and 30th column at Pechorlag, was executed only because he was ill and did not start work when tho guard called him...
...Ju»t ttnother painful operation on his buckshot-mangled arm...
...Walter Reuther missed tlw recent CIO Executive Board meeting, something he hasn't done in years...
...at night, having returned exhausted from work, he stands in an interminable line, near a hospital lacking medicaments...
...The former deportee who condones the existence of concentration camps renounces the role which his own experience under the Nazis and his duty to his dead comrades imposes upon him...
...Hungary, Yugoslavia as well as Israel...
...Only the POMS' sor of food and power can have a woman...
...Let Canada Lee or Max Yergan tell Edwards what it means to become a Stalinist shill...
...Catholics, Baptists, members of the Ukrainian Church groups...
...Rudek fell and screamed...
...i? ? * IT WAS INEVITABLE, of course, that little David Rousset should have challenged the Soviet Goliath...
...h The Soviet Government solemnly denies the charge of crimes against humanity...
...Heard on the Left WHEN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY cast about for i fWXMm^r to Nicholas Murray ButUr...
...After sevoral sessions, it was agreed to draw up a list of p^ontlal candidates, all prominont educators...
...The list was read off at a meeting and was accepted as the basis of discussion at the next mooting...
...Any split among former deportees on the question of concentration camps," the French Commision of Inquiry" declared in a recent statement, "can have only one meaning: that some of the deportees condone the existence of concentration camps in certain historical, social, ecnomic or political circumstances...
...Sources of information in regard to the Russian concentration camp system are widely varied...
...Human decency, reason, democratic freedoms—these were little more than "bourgeois myths...
...Men were decimated by influenza, peumonia...
...Our proposal, tlvit men who have suffered as victims'of the Nazis shall freely study the corrective labor camps, offers the Soviet Union the fairest way to justify its good faith before the world...
...There is no possible misinterpretation: The law recognizes and approves deportation without trial...
...In addition to the privileges of authority, ?food and lodgipg held by the Buchenwald aristocracy, the "camp wife" has become a sign of wealth, Six hundred to eight hundred prisoners comprise a .square...
...His L'Universe Concentrationnaire is certainly the most powerful indictment of the brutalitarian world erected by both Hitler and Stalin...
...Yaffe has lust returned from a tour which took him to Poland...
...Jews...
...Tha ing ia^Mctlof the camp aurso gtvi Mdors to distribute watwr...
...The war, which opened the Nazi camps to the world and then destroyed them, also broice the silence regarding Russia's remote territories...
...Kravchenko's trial involved the not-tooattractive personality of the author of / Chose Freedom...
...There are indications that it is...
...At that next meoting, two members representing the Trustees roported that they had had a fortunate opportunity recently to discuss the Columbia presidency with on* of the potentials—Eisenhower...
...Now Rousset, like Kravchenko, is suing Lettres Francaise for libel...
...According to most documents women, representing 10 per cent of the prisoners, must prostitute thtnp...
...Except for Communists, it represents all shades of French political opinion—from Rigbt to Left...
...It would have been denounced as a sinister plot of "Americai\ imperialism...
...Imagine the mass graves of the old Buchenwald erupting with a resurrection of their dead, delegates of a protesting humanity united on the great square under the flares and snow, listening to the drumbeats and waiting to b>e counted...
...Although faculty committeemen talked about resigning, nothing happened...
...Even after the German experience, the immensity and stability of the Russian concentration camp system staggers us...
...The end of World War 11 found the European intellectuals, especially those of the "left," in a state of complete spiritual and moral confusion...
...Moscow's halo is fading...
...The work gang of 25 to 40 prisoners has a brigadier at its head and a diesiatnik, who sets down .worh quotas for the group and for Mdi member...
...David Rousset's Je propose may yet have the same impact on Europe as Emile Zola's J'accuse, which brought the infamous Dreyfus case to the attention of the civilized world...
...In order to transport 800 to 2,000 deportees over a period of Mveral weeks, freight cars are converted, with an iron tube in the floor for a toilet, tiers of wooden bunks, sentr> boxes with telephones connectinj^ to the Commandant's car...
...Not so long ago Gestapo Chief Himmler posted above the infamous Sachsenhausen camp the slogan "Joy Through Work...
...Is there a deal on to bring back Walter White as secretary of the NAACP...
...slave laborers originally deported to Germany...
...They come from every nationality — Poles of every political complexion, even communist...
...France's David and the Soviet Goliath By LEON DENNEN PARIS...
...to the Council...
...Out of this cacophony, the "concentration camp man" emerges...
...In the middle of the night, in every kind of weather, he is aroused by blows to unload freight cars...
...w ,* IS THIS CLIMATE changing...
...The strongest obscenities wouM be too weak...
...He does not, however, mention the number of such "students...
...The revolution was on the march...
...This cannot be a conspiracy...
...And it is this tinique quality of the Soviet syst«n concentratiim camps which, above all, fills us with such anxiety...
...Bert Andrews' version has been postponed until ajter the U.S...
...estMlisIwd, this Commisakm would {Mtnally demand Irom the Sovkt Govenunmt the right to conduct an mvestlgation en the spot, 'ndthln the Kussian campa...
...Amid doubts, fears and unsettled cravings — in a frantic search for spiritual calm and economic security—the post-Nazi generation of European intellectuals soon discovered a "faith for living" in the falsifications and fabrications of the Soviet propaganda machine...
...In summer the cutting of hay on swampy ground kept us in water or mud up to our knees for ten and twelve-hour stretches...
...Under the menace of dogs and rifles, he works until far beyond the power of his muscles...
...Without any warning the guard shot him...
...Purpose—ii CP is outlawed, many will be sent to Central and South America to keep on working...
...He is awakened before dawn...
...The camps make the police an imposing social power within the State, a well-defended master of manpower...
...Even the Soviet legal texts themselves attest to this horror...
...0 Huge Ernst, the Hotel & Restaurant Employees International president, sent a telegram of condemnation to the AFL Executive Council following the election of William McFetridge (next AFL President...
...The class that orf,'anizes tlie camps is not threatened with death...
...The Nazi SS reached this state only at the very last stages of its existence...
...Two years ago, any such attempt would have been impossible in Western Europe, especially in France...
...Within the camps they dominate through robbery and terror...
...Their central administration, the Gulag, is one of the largest economic trusts of the U. S. S. R. Contracts are prepared on the basis of the prevailing wage rates, but since deportee labor costs far less, the difference is absorbed by the police "corporation...
...tolttai them U was a 'Utrtiga aiod idno...
...It was a fait accompli...
...The nauseating steam would render the barracks air still more fetid...
...Section 129 recalls that in October, 1943, "mstitutions for correctional labor were transferred from the Ministries of Justice to the NKVD (now MVD) of the U. S. S. R." It is a bad sign when the highest police organization of a government takes charge of the re-education of its citizens...
...My proposal is for a Commission of Inquiry consisting of former political deportees, men who Icnow • the world of con^tntton cann and caiittot l|e duped...
...tuberculosis, malaria, scurvy and festering sores...
...The number of documented reports and their insistence do not permit us to reject them without a hearing, without asking for proof...
...Whatever the outcome of the campaign, European intellectuals, especially those of the left, .seem to be awakening—slowly and tortuously, to be sure--lo the realities of life...
...But here the analogy bet\veen the two suits ends...
...Nothing politicaUii significant...
...Why, we talked to General Eisenhower...
...Finally, a cerl lain grouping of regions forms K superior body called a camp .sy.sfcirti K' 4 V m THREE TYPES of camps are being developed...
...The list, which was narrowed down to e. handful oi men...
...THE NAZI CAMPS, during nearly their entire existenee, were but one apocalyptic aspect of a general pathoiogical pattern...
...Eventually it hopes to attract organizations of deportees in other European countries...
...The Communists are furious...
...There was some hemming and hawing because the faculty meml>ers were a little put out at the hastiness of the action without faculty consultation...
...Neither r»in nor snow storms kept thsm from making us chop trees...
...Edwards'hasn't done much movie-making since the Him in which he played wonderiuliy well as a phychlcally stricken Negro soldier...
...Working caHiP* are the most numerous...
...Ho is an actor of talent who is sure to dribble away if he allows himself to be so exploited by the Stalinists...
...Russians, including former MVD officials...
...Michael Quill's Transport Workers Union will shortly jeel a little AFL organizing competition...
...Seeds of Treason, the Victor Lasky-Ralph Toledano book on the Hiss-Chambers trial (Funic & Wagnalls, any minute), will be the first one out on the case...
...These campf...
...Lindeman), told friends in America the day after the British elections that Churchill's campaign proposal for t;is-a-t;is negotiations with Stalin lost the Conservatives total victory...
...These small new details are alarming, for they indicate a special kind of cukulation necessary only in the case oi permanent instutitions...
...In Rousset's case it will be former inmates of Nazi concentration camps pleading for the lives of millions of inmates in Soviet slave labor camps...
...Milton Eisenhower...
...Milton Eisenhower is now head of Penn State...
...The present network of camps spreads across Siberia to the White Sea and the Baltic, from even the very outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow to Baku...
...w James Edwards, star oi Home of tlie Hrave, is being given the rush act by the Commies.' He's been taken in by them, by Daily \forker blurbs: they run his photograph, print his every word...
...One of Churchill's closest friends and advisers, Lord Charwell (Gen...
...I will quote only two parts...
...nationals of occupied countries...
...Rousset's simple question—"Is it true that ten million or more men and women are condemned to slave labor in the Soviet Union...
...How would they judge the safe, comfortable, intelligent citizens of 0» West who hewed these nefw cHm tti terror and did nothing in answez...
...Finally there are the political prisoners: peasants hostile to collectivization...
...THIS WORLD has its own structiire...
...But innovations have been addeti...
...The Russian camps are "co-educational...
...The poUfw^" this bureaucratic institution ha|| been multiplied with the immsf^ ity of its resources and the tasks It has accomplished...
...Others are there for "crimes against the way of life," among them sex perverts and officials who speculated for profit They supply strong contingents to tiie camp bureaucracy...
...b) a decree of an administrative body...
...4 Communist party functionaries are now under orders lo start studying Spanish immediately...
...Heading the administri live units are allocation camps serv ing as convict pools, which tak« into consideration the needs of tho entire plan and the mortality rate.i Comparable with, but more ex-J ten.sive than Buchenwald, Neuenganime and Sach.senhausen under the axis are the Kotlas concentration camp on the northern Dviiia serving several camp systems tween the Dvina and the Uj^-,, Bukhata-Nakhodka, near Vladivoa*tok, heading camp systems between Amur, Kolyma, Kamchatka, Sakhalin, arbund Yakutsk and VkrlcTit...
...A physician and writer of note, he is the most articulate of Hitler's former victims...
...selves to survive...
...THE WHIP...
...The French Commission of Inquiry Into the Existence of Concentration Camps is made up of thirty-three Frenchmen, twentyeight ol whom represent nine organizations of former deportfts...
...Soma might r^y...
...The/stories of escaped prisoners arb/filled with paralyzing fear of these criminals...
...Ernst, who had sought election, took a crack at the Council, saying apparently one either had to be a Republican or pro-Taft-Hartley to be named...
...Ther* was a gasp...
...Given neither the means nor the time to wash, he wears foul rags...
...It is noteworthy that the Communists no longer deny the existence of concentration camps in the Soviet Union...
...But here are a few excerpts chosen at random: "Wa war* forcad to work at a temperature of 40 degrees below zero...
...The vast army of former deportees, the West European elite which once bled in the extermination camps of Buchenwald and Maidanek, is gradually rallying to his call...
...the common criminals are the furious instruments of the masters' vengeance...
...He is hungry, sick and afraid...
...During the last five years there have been increasing numhers of reports on Soviet concentration camps...
...A union resolution also criticised the Federation...
...I only ask you to say, "the file must be opened...
...are thus an expression of n<Mfin«I relatioM, tlw mtural de-' velo|»nent ol a ntw »dety...
...He lives in wooden barracks, or under a tent, or in earthen caves...
...One finds religious mystics, the laughing stock of other prisoners, who refuse to work and are doomed to a more or less rapid death...
...foreign communists...
...former prisoners of war...
...hoyansk...
...Each camp is a veritable Tower of Babel...
...Only in their final years did they l>ecome an integral part of a society founded on a new type of human exploitation...
...The history of the gold industry in the Kolyma Basin, its capital Magadan and its Slate apparatus, the Dalstroy, is one of the most fantastic epics of the Deportation...
...It is in possession of considerable power and firmly rfsolvefl to carve out its future...
...In Russia this development is entirely completed...
...He is nightmarishly typical...
...The stone buildings of Buchenwald, built to last, gave that prison city the aura of eternity...
...Gangrene and frozen limbs required frequent amputationa...
...Section 8 states: "Persons are sent to correctional labor camps who have been condemned by (a) a sentence passed by a tribunal...
...9 THE SOVIET CODE of correctional labor was recently published abroad...
...The same feeling grips you when you exexamine the file on Russia...
...Polish, Chinese and Korean inhabitants of regions bordering the Soviet Union...
...His fate is locked between barbed wire barricades, beneath observation towers...
...For once they rre on the defensive...
...NLRB figures just released reveal the AFL has won elections in 2,092 plants while the CIO has won in only 858 plants...
...I de not adk the world to steie^ "CMKentrallan camps exist In Russia...
...David Rousset's appeal—unthinltable two years or even a year ago—is receiving increasing attention in European intellectual circles of the left...
...a joint faculty-trustoe «oiiiinUiM was appointed to select the man...
...It was equally inevitable that the Communist press should attack Rousset as a liar, Trotskyist and Titoist...
...Vishinsky tells us there are correction camps where men are rehabilitated through labor...
...SPACE LIMITS quotation...
...Millions «l men today suffer horribly, with no hope tar om cQmpaaikm...
...Refusal to work was forbidden under penalty of death...
...Our Information Is insufftcslant to pronounce such a serious verdict...
...Men of foresight with potentialities of leadership were slow in emerging (as they still are...
...said ono of the Trustee committee members...
...In the peat digging season we would lie down at night near the stoves, our clothes drenched...
...has made a deep impreasion even in circlee where hitherto the Staliniats reigned supreme...
...Yesterday the Soviet Pnion had only political detention campa Tho cruel civil war of the collectivization period started her on this enterprise of forced labor which plays its part in every economic sector, including scientific research...
...To be sure, there are prison camps in the U.S.S.R., writes Pierre Daix in Lettres Francaise, but these are merely "educational institutions" where under "comfortable prison conditions" the inmates are taught to become good Soviet citizens...
...As in the German camps, sexual relations are forbidden...
...He has a respected name, a good reputation and he's a good educator—you can say that «d>out Milton Eisenhower...
...At night he reports on work accomplished and establishei a percentage for each individual This is important since the food distributed will depend upon his report, and the diesiatnik is therefore a powerful man...
...Having suffered the indignities of Buchenwald and Hitler's salt mines at Helmstedt, Rousset, after a prolonged period of soul-searching, revolted against the cowardice of Europe's leftists intellectuals...
...DAVID ROUSSETS threemonth-old movement to force an international investigation ^f Soviet slave labor is undoubtedly the first brif^ht spot on the otherwise dark intellectual horizon of postwar Europe...
...Supreme Court renders the final verdict...
...Finally one of them said: "Well, we could make a worse choice than Eisenhower...
Vol. 33 • March 1950 • No. 10
