GERMANY: Red Zone Three Rs

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Berlin's RIAS (Radio in American Sector) last week released a letter by a Soviet sector listener describing an "entertainment" for parents by East Zone schoolchildren.

Lining up some chairs, the German youngsters symbolically "boarded an aircraft for America. One scene showed a poor young Negro boy polishing the boots of an American naval officer . . . He begged for his pay of 10¢. The officer's answer was a blow in the face that almost knocked the boy off his chair . . . The officer said: 'He is only Negro scum. My name is John Smith. My father made billions in the last world war. He just bought me a snappy eight-cylinder auto . . . A while ago I was driving 60 miles an hour and turned a sharp corner where two Negroes were sitting. I just ran over them ... We lynch ten Negroes every day. You have no idea how much fun it is.' "

Scene II was Korea. Two wounded boys "strutted about the stage explaining to the children that American gangsters had attacked the Korean people, to acquire their natural resources . . . Then the plane flew to the Soviet paradise. The children were received by Soviet youth with flags and fanfare . . . told they should travel around the country as guests and dear friends, to see for themselves the great progress . . .

"Then the teacher gave a talk: 'Dear Parents . . . You should take to heart the deep meaning of what your children have offered.' We went home in horror," concluded the writer, whose name and address RIAS carefully withheld, "feeling as though the Russians had marched in all over again."