To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Since you printed the letter from "Zdenek" telling of his gradual acceptance of some of the changes brought about by the Communist rise to power in Czechoslovakia, I though your readers might be interested in this letter I recently received from a friend in Eastern Germany.

Inasmuch as I still write regularly to him, I thought I might be better if you did not print my name, and of course his name must be withheld for obvious reasons. (Name withheld by request)

Now at last on Sunday afternoon I found the opportunity to answer your letter, because I had so many to do in the past fortnight that I couldn't write before . . . Were my letters opened by Russian censorship? This would interest me very much, because you write you know nothing about the Eastern areas of Europe, and it would be dangerous for me if I would write the only truth and my letters are opened by the Russians. Why, later on. . .

Now I will begin to write about the Eastern areas of Europe. . If you write you know nearly nothing about the area behind the "iron curtain," I must suppose that this you know is wrong, because the Russians show to American and foreign reporters only a very little bit and those you know as "Potemkin village," the truth no one will know. You may ask, what is the only truth? This is not easy to say, but I will try it.

Leipzig was garrisoned by the U. S. forces in the May '45, but in July '45 the Russians garrisoned our town and what happened then in Leipzig is typically for all areas which are occupied by the Russian. The beginning of all was to occupy all offices with men, who . . . were formed for their tasks in Russian political-schools. All men who were real democrats were out away, and if one of them said only one word against the men, who reigned now in a "real-democratically manner," he came into a concentration-camp. You may say this is an institution of the "Nazi-time." Yes, it was, but there is only one difference. In the years 1933-45 only a dew Germans knew of this institutions and nearly no Germans knew what happened there, but now all men in the Eastern part of Germany and in the Western too know, that more than 16 concentration-camps with more than 80,00 inhabitants exist in the Russian zone and yet another difference, the whole mankind was terrified about the abominations in this camps but this was only a fly to an elephant, what happens now. Nearly to men died in one camp on every day by hunger and strokes and other inhumanities, you must now not believe that this is blown up--it is the only truth. The men in the camps are no Nazis, they are democrats who fought against the Nazis and their despotism, and now if they saw that the Russians meant yet a much more despotism, while former officers and Nazis, who were in schools in Russia lend our country.

You may read a lot of reports of the bizone and you will surely say, it must the awfully to live there, but life in the east-zone is twice so badly. For the money you get on the black-market in Leipzig one bread, you get in the bizone four and you see yourself, where life grown bitter, though in the bizone are much more displace persons than in the Russain zone, because an enormous part of our harvest is brought to Russia. On the end I must yet once say, that all I wrote, is the only truth and you must not think that I hate the Russians and I write to you calumnious things.

. . . and I beg you to write in your letter nothing about mine because I want to live yet for some years--you know concentration-camps . . .