Stalin & the Working Girl

Stalin will protect the working girl, vow the Communists. Last week a pretty 21-year-old blonde, who with three men escaped from Poland to Sweden in a rattletrap plane (TIME, Aug. 13), told how he does it.

Christina (second name withheld because her parents are still in Poland) was a clerk in a state food monopoly. Her story: "If you are late for work three times in a month, they take away half your pay. A girl's average salary is 350 zloty ($90) a month. But a plain dress costs 600 zloty, so pay cuts are tough . . . If you refuse to work overtime, they call you a saboteur and a political enemy. Sometimes they fire you. If you get fired this way twice, you are sent to a labor camp. This is what Polish girls are afraid of more than anything.

"The camps are supposed to be a strict secret, but women who have been sent there manage to smuggle letters out. The girls are guarded by Russians while they work--in mines or stone quarries, or on roads. It's heavy work that women simply are physically unable to do. None of the girls ever return that I know of."

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