Little Siberia

For the past four years the world has known that the Russians are mining uranium in Eastern Germany. Frightened workers who managed to escape from the mines into Germany's Western zones have told bits & pieces of the story. Last week

British occupation authorities in Germany released a detailed, 5,000-word report on the Reds' "little Siberia" in Eastern Germany, where 300,000 men & women work day and night to produce uranium "for the sole benefit of the Russian war machine."*

The entire area--which includes the ore-heavy Erzgebirge and Harz Mountains, and stretches roughly from the Czech frontier across Thuringia to the borders of the U.S. and British zones--is tightly shut off from the outside world. It is heavily guarded by Red German police and by a special force of 5,000 MVD men.

Most of the workers are forcibly conscripted, include political opponents of the Communist Party, criminals serving out their sentences, refugees from eastern countries, and East German workers laid off in other industries. The Reds have recently launched a huge campaign to persuade German workers to "volunteer" for the mines. Workers who refuse may lose their food ration cards.

Female workers, dubbed Bergfrauen (mountain women) by the local population, labor as hard as the men, digging, clearing trenches, building galleries, pushing trolleys. Average pay is 200-400 East marks ($8 to $16) weekly, although a worker who exceeds the "norm" may make more. Many miners, who are issued no dust-masks, suffer from the occupational disease of silicosis. Many others suffer from gas poisoning caused by the badly ventilated mines; doctors send them back to work if they are not more than "50% disabled." The accident rate is high. News of major mining disasters continues to seep out, despite police measures to suppress it.

A Soviet monopoly called the Wismut A.G. runs little Siberia. It has an administrative staff of 15,000, directed by a Major General Malzev. Since mining began in August 1946, millions of tons of pitchblende have been extracted by Wismut A.G. and sent to Russia. It is poor in uranium content. In the last six months production has been whipped up to a "frantic" pace. Says the British report: "It can only be concluded that the Russians are in urgent need of uranium."

*The British government announced last week that a deposit of uranium ore amounting to a million tons had been discovered in northern Wales. British spokesmen said that the ore was of "extremely low yield," but "in no way inferior" to that being worked by the Russians in Germany.

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