Volume 1,

No.

17, .February 24, 1945

Delegates To World Labor Meet

Agree

Big 3 Meet
Greeted By
U.S. Labor

NEW YORK. —- (FP) —

From union halls to Wail
Street, Americans were united
in hope for the future peace
of the world as they hailed Feb.
i3 the histeric agreements
teached by the Big Three at the
Crimea Conference. The news
fom Yalta was greeted with
verwhelming joy throughout the
war-torn world. Only the voices
1 Toyko and Berlin and a few
feeble -echoes in the American
ress objected.
Leaders of the ‘CIO in London
er the World Trade Union Cen-
erence joined with the union
eaders of all the United Nations
n sending telegrams to Pres.
toosevelt, Prime Minister
ynurchill and Premier Stalin
loicing their “appreciation. and
watitude for the splendid work
one by the Big Three at the Gri-
iea_ Conference.”

INION LOCALS

As the first statements besa
> come in from individual
nions, the Greater New York
‘10 Council, in the name of its
30,000 members, said the Cri-
tea conference advances the
ovement toward victory and
ishing; peace with the speed of
tven-league boots” and called
© strengthened unity of indus-
¥; government and labor to
ary it through.

The conference “shattered all
\usions of the fascists in Ger-
any and elsewhere,” the Natl.
laritime Union (GIO) said. It
ans “a partnership of all de-
mt people for expanding pro-
iétion for employment, for se-
irity and peace,” United Office
aid Professional Workers (CIO)
uid. It “gives every worker the
3st possible chance for a job”’
ze Transport Workers Union
SIO) said.

LAY CONGRESS

Calling upon all Slavic Amer-
ans to back Roosevelt in realiz-
ig the aims of Crimea, the na-
onal committee of the Amer-
ran’ Slav Congress greeted the
latement en Poland and Yugo-
avia as “the most significant
pression of Allied determina-
On to help these two nations es-
‘blish democratic governments
Bsed on the will of their peo-
tes.” The Natl. Negro Congress
ired the President unconditional
ipport of the Crimea decisions.
USINESS MEN

Business men saw a guarantee
f sure peace and prosperous
2ars ahead in the news of the
ig Three agreement. Steel, Mo-
or, rail and other industrial
eks responded vigorously and
amediately, the Wall Street
jurmal said. The strong actiyi-
be pusked prices to their highest
bint of the season and brought
te Dow-Jones industrial aver-

'—Continued on Page 10

Delegate Sidney Hillman lost no time in calling for a new
world labor organization to replace the wornout International

Federation of Trade Unions.

Above. Sec’y. Walter Citrine

(right) of British Trades Union Congess greets Hillman at

the conference.

Charred Corpses Show

Nazi Terror In Lodz

By JOHN FISHER
LODZ, Poland. — (ALN) — Lodz, the second city of
present-day Poland, is a lively, bustling, modern town with
houses and factories mostly intact—in sharp contrast with the
ghastly ruins of Warsaw through which I traveled for hours

earlier this week without seeing
a single building even remotely
resembling a place of habitation.
Warsaw was obviously systemat-
ically and wantonly destroyed on
a scale probably unparalleled in
history.

Tf Warsaw is an architectural
and cultural Maidanek as well as
a human holocaust, Lodz, too has
suffered terribly from five years
of Nazi occupation. At the first
glance, it is not obvious as the
main streets are clean and the
houses standing and even some
ivams are running, while animat-
ed crowds listen to loudspeakers
blaring the latest victories. The
population of Lodz was murdered
slowly—or, in the case of the
huge Jewish community, murder-

eG more quickly—by the German

overlords who sought to hasten
the process of Germanization by
€limination,
CHARRED CORPSES

The homes and industries of
Lodz were largely saved by the

swift advance of the Red Army.

I visited the great Scheibler and
Grohmann textile factory, still
intact. But at another textile
factory that I visited, the Abe
plant in the suburb of Radogoszez,
the hastily retreating S. S. men
improvised a minor Maidanek,
shooting and incinerating several
thousand Polish forced laborers,
including political prisoners. If
saw charred corpses piled high im
the snow of the factory yard.

‘shots,

The corpses were still being
sorted out for identification by a
crowd of weeping relatives. Sev-
eral women living in the neigh-
borhood told how the night of Jan-
wary 17 they heard SS guards
summon the prisoners, heard
shouts for help and the
sounds of struggle. and finally
the strains of the Polish national
anthem as the men were shot
dewn by machine guns.

NATIVE-BORN GERMANS

One of the thorniest problems
facing Lodz is what to do with the
thousands of Germans who were
born or lived for many years in
Poland and still mingle freely
with the Polish community._° In
Warsaw, President Boleslaw Bie-
rut of the Polish Provisional Gov-
ernment told me that the German
civilians who had not persecuted
Poles would not be prosecuted,
but the question of transferring
the German population is being
considered. Micheslay Zdechow-
ski, chairman of the Lodz Trades
and Labor Council, told me that
his wife, like many others, had
received a request from one Ger-
man to sign a statement that he
had behaved decently, but she felt
unable to do this conscientiously.

LABOR SHORTAGE

The Minister for Industry in
the Bierut administration, M.
Mine, told me in Lodz that Po-

—Continued on Page 10

On Postwar German Control

LONDON (AlN) — Complete agreement of the Big
Three at the world labor conference—the CIO, the Soviet
Central Council of Trade Unions and the British Trades Union
Congress—on the postwar treatment of Germany was achiev-
ed during the discussion of the peace settlement, the second

item on the conference agenda.

Opening the debate, TUC gen-
eral secretary Sir Walter Citrine
outlined a nine-point program for
Germany’s “unconditional sur-
render,” urging that all war crim-
inals be brought to justice, that
all stolen property be restored
and that full reparations be made.
Citrine stressed that the interna-
tional labor movement must es-
tablish consultative machinery in
eonjunction with the internation-
al supervising authority to safe-
guard the conditions under which
German labor is employed.

The program outlined by Cit-
rine demanded: @ that Germany
be defeated “completely and be-
yond all question” and that “the
myth of Germany’s invincibility”
be destroyed once and for all;
@ that Germany’s “blood-guilty
war leaders and war criminals”
pay the full penalty for their
crimes and that “every German
man or woman who has taken an
active part in the atrocities of
which a record exists must be
brought to trial and punishment”:
-@ that restitution be made for

all stolen property “witether loot-

ed from conquered cities, exprop-
riated during military occupation,
exacted from municipalities or
communes, or plundered from in-
dividual citizens.”

® that Germany must make
reparations “in services, goods
and money even though it in-
volves the continuance of Allied
eontrol over the entire German

economy for many years and per- |

haps for generations’; @ that
Germany must be totally disarm-
ed by “the surrender of all muni-
tions, the dissolution of the Ger-
man general staff and the dis-
bandment of all her armed forces,
the closing down of ali German
war factories, the dispersal of all
war-like stores and raw materials
used in war manufacture, the dis-
mantling of all industrial estab-
lishments in which war produc-
tion has béen carried on and the
eutright prohibition of the pro-
duction and use of aircraft”;

@ that the German military
system “be utterly eliminated,”
with all agencies of military in-
struction closed, the wearing of
uniforms prohibited and such
changes made ‘in the political,
economic, social and territorial
structure of the German Reich”
as will destroy its foundation;
@ Germany must be democratized
“by the establishment of such
political and economic conditions
within which the framework of
the institutions of free citizenship
can be developed under stringent
guarantees,” particularly the re-
establishment of free trade unions
and the freedom of political and
cultural association and of the
press and public meetings;

@ German youth must be re-
educated “in an atmosphere
cleansed of the Prussian militar-
ist tradition with its glorification
of war and its contemptuous and
hostile attitude toward democratic
ideals”; and @ Germany, “thus
transformed, must be reintegrat-
ed ultimately with the Huropean
community and with the new

world order that the United Na-
tions are resolved to establish in
the coming peace settlement.”

FULL AGREEMENT

Pull agreement with the Citrine
proposals was expressed by Mik-
hail Tarasov for Soviet labor and
by James B. Carey, secretary-
treasurer of the CIO. Comment-
ing on the program, Carey assert-
ed that “‘the question is not one of
a -hard or soft peace but of tak-
ing all the necessary measures to.
guarantee that aggressor nations

will not have another opportunity ©

to start aggression’ Carey
pledged “the force and strength”
of the CIO to ensure that “the
measures adopted at this confer-
ence are obtained.” :

Warning that fascism “is not

the prerogative of the German

nation alone,” Vicente Lombardo
Toledano, head of the Latin Am-
erican delegation, pointed out
that fascist regimes exist in Ar-
gentina, Spain and Portugal and
asserted: “It is useless to punish
Germany and allow the other fas-
cist regimes to remain.” While
voicing support of the Citrine
proposals, S. A. Dange, president
of the All-India Trades Union
Congress, criticized the fact that
they did not specify the role that
trade unions should play inside
the various democratic countries.

NEW INTERNATIONAL

Opening the discussion on the
basis for a world labor federa-
tion, Sidney Hillman of the CIO,
in his first address before the
conference, ‘urged the organiza-
tion of a brand new trade union
international and not the utiliza-
tion of the International Federa-
tion of Trade Unions. Hillman
termed the IPTU “inadequate,
impotent and outworn,” stating:
“Three years after the coalition
of freedom-loving nations has
been given organizational form
through the establishment of the
United Nations, the leaders of
the IF TU are still unable to agree
among themselves for the crea-
tion of an international labor or-
ganization similarly broad and in-
clusive.

“At this late date they find it
necessary to postpone considera-
tion of this question for another
eight months. That is a most un-
fortunate situation but itis a sit-
uation now existing and it exists
in no small measure because the
representatives of the IFTU’s
American affiliate—the API, —
stubbornly persist in pursuing
their narrow factional feuds,
petty jealousies and anti-Soviet
bias.”

Pointing out that the position
of the AFL leadership does not
reflect the desires of their mem-
bership and that the CIO “deep-
ly regrets’? the AFIL’s absence,
Hillman added: “Surely neither
we nor the other delegates here
can sit for another eight months
in the hope that these gentlemen
may change their minds or that
the other EETU members will fin-
ally decide to proceed without
them.”

—Continued- on Page 10

aibisranh ig Sapa dae ttemerr me