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Limestone Ridge Battle Map 1 June 2, 1866 7:00 – 8:00 A.M. As the Canadians advance the Fenians repeatedly fire and  withdraw across Bertie Road forcing the Canadians to advance through open fields climbing over fences.

MAP LEGEND

2nd Battalion Queen’s Own Rifles Toronto

13th Battalion  Volunteer Infantry Hamilton Caledonia and York Country Companies Fenian Brotherhood (FB) Irish Republican Army (IRA) 

DAY 1:  Friday, October 16

Lee Harvey Oswald, age nineteen, arrived in Moscow on the morning of Friday, October 16, 1959 by train from Helsinki. He would have disembarked at the Leningradsky train station at Komsomolskaya Square which is located in the north-east quadrant of a ring road that encircles the center of Moscow. (The US embassy is located at the west compass point of the ring road.) He was met by an unidentified Intourist representative and driven to the Hotel Berlin, which at one time, had been called the Savoy. (Today it has reverted to the name Savoy.) The Hotel Berlin is located in the Kuznetsky Most area, overshadowed by two enormous buildings:  Detsky Mir (“Children’s World”), a huge department store with a large selection of children’s products on the main floor, and across the street, the Lubyianka complex — the KGB Headquarters and former NKVD prison.
 

He was met in the hotel lobby by Rimma Semenova Shirakova, age twenty-two, a graduate in English and Arabic from the Moscow Foreign Languages Institute and an Intourist guide. She was assigned to him as his personal guide, a privilege of Deluxe class tourists. That morning, Oswald and Shirakova toured Moscow in an automobile, stopping occasionally at various points of interest. In 1993, Rimma recalled that Oswald was mostly silent and did not interrupt her tour talk. In general, she found him polite and nice. They returned to the hotel at noon so that Oswald could have his lunch. A tour of the Kremlin was scheduled for the afternoon.
   

When Oswald returned from lunch, he told Rimma that he did not want to go on a tour but that he wanted to talk. Rimma says they went outside and sat on a bench as it was a warm day. (Probably at Revolutionary Square, the nearest location to the hotel where there are benches.)

In Rimma’s account as described by Norman Mailer in Oswald’s Tale (pp.44-45) (he only paraphrases her), Oswald told her did not want to return to the US–there was no sense to it. His mother had remarried and was no longer interested in him. Nobody was interested in him. When he served as a Marine in the Far East he had seen much suffering and the US had fomented unjust wars in which he did not want to take part. She had the impression that he had seen combat. He had read that the Soviet people lived good, useful, and very peaceful lives and he had come here to see this for himself. Now he wanted to stay, he repeated. This was a proper country for his political views.

Rimma gives Oswald the nickname Alek  because Lee sounds too Chinese and confuses the Russians.  Oswald will adopt this name for the remainder of his stay in Russia.   

By the end of that day, a letter requesting asylum and citizenship had been written, signed, sealed and delivered to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.  A copy of the letter was included in the 80 pages of Soviet documents released in 1999 to the USA by the Russian Federation.  The text of the letter reads:

Oct. 16, 1959

To the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. I Lee Harvey Oswald, request that I be granted citizenship in the Soviet Union. My visa began on Oct. 15, and will expire on Oct. 21. I must be granted asylum before this date, while I wait for the citizenship decision. At present I am a citizen of the United States of America. I want citizenship because; I am a communist and a worker. I have lived in a decadent capitalist society where the workers are slaves. I am twenty years old, I have completed three years in the United States Marine Corps, I served with the occupation forces in Japan. I have seen American imperialism in all its forms. I do not want to return to any country outside of the Soviet Union. I am willing to give up my American citizenship and assume the responsibilities of a Soviet citizen. I had saved my money which I earned as a private in the American military for two years, in order to come to Russia for the express purpose of seeking citizenship here. I do not have enough money left to live indefinitely here, or to return to any other country. I have no desire to return to any other country. I ask that my request be given quick consideration. Sincerely,

Lee H. Oswald

 
 

In a document he called his Historic Diary, Oswald wrote: 

Oct. 16.
Arrive from Helsinki by train; am met by Intourist Representative and in car to hotel “Berlin”. Register as “student”(5 day Luxury tourist. Ticket). Meet my Intourist guide Rima Shirokova I explain to her I wish to apply for Russian citizenship. She is flabbergasted, but agrees to help. She checks with her boss, main office Intourist, then helps me address a letter to Supreme Soviet asking for citizenship, meanwhile boss telephones passport & visa office and notifies them about me.
[CE 24]

Again, according to Mailer’s account, nobody asked Rimma Shirakova to help Oswald draft the letter.  Rimma claims she did it on her own initiative, believing that she was helping Oswald and that she believed it was perfectly natural for anyone to wish to live in the USSR. Moreover, Shirakova adds that when she reported her actions to her immediate supervisor, a female, she said, “What have you done? He came as a tourist. Let him be a tourist.” (That supervisor might be Rosa Agafonova, the senior interpretor at Hotel Berlin.)

Oswald’s diary contradicts Shirakova’s assertion that she helped him all on her own, as does common sense. It is highly unlikely that any Intourist guide would get involved in a defection without first checking with her supervisors. Furthermore, Shirakova states that she was “shocked” by Oswald’s statement and that in her Intourist training this scenario was never discussed. That would be more the reason to go to a higher authority one would think.  The speed and dispatch with which Oswald’s request on a park bench on Friday afternoon was transformed into a formal letter delivered to the Supreme Soviet is remarkable–especially since we are talking about Friday afternoon when everybody wants to go home (or perhaps that is precisely the reason everything was so quickly handled.)

In his book, Passport to Assassination  KGB Colonel Oleg Nechiporenko claims to quote from a KGB document he had inspected in 1992. The document gives a slightly different version of events. It states that in talking to Shirakova, Oswald “expressed interest in where and to whom he should send the necessary application. Soon after, he informed her that he had sent his declaration to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and was awaiting its decision.”

DAY TWO: Saturday, October 17

We have no precise information on what Lee Harvey Oswald did on Saturday, October 17, his second day in Moscow.  We know more today about what the Soviet authorities were doing.

On October 17, the Secretary of the Soviet Presidium, M.P. Georgadze, forwarded a translation of Oswald’s letter to the KGB, referenced file “No. 435 October 17, 1959.”  The enclosed translation contained an error. Whereas Oswald stated he served three years in the Marines, the Russian translator wrote that Oswald had “completed three years in a US naval academy.” That alone must have left a negative impression on the KGB, as Oswald stated in the same letter that he served as a private. It was not a good sign that their subject after three years in a naval academy did not rise above the rank of private. The first impression must have been that either Oswald was a total foul-up, or a liar, or mentally unstable, or all three. And first impressions, as they say, are the most important.

In his diary Oswald writes:

Oct. 17.
Rima meets me for Intourist sightseeing, says we must continue with this although I am too nervous, she is “sure” I’ll have an answer soon. Asks me about myself and my reasons for doing this. I explain I am a communist, etc. She is politely sympathetic, but uneasy now. She tries to be a friend to me. She feels sorry for me; I am something new. 

DAY THREE:  Sunday, October 18

It is Sunday and Oswald celebrates his twentieth birthday.  Rimma Shirakova gives him a Russian edition of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot in which she writes, “Dear Lee, Great congratulations.  Let all your dreams come true!  18.X.1959 Moscow  Yours, Rimma.” [CE 1399]  They visit Lenin’s tomb in the Red Square. 

In 1993, Rimma states that on this day Oswald began tell her that he knew military secrets which he would willing to pass to the Soviets–he knew things about airplanes and devices and that he wants to meet with Soviet authorities.

DAY FOUR:  Monday, October 19

According to Rimma’s recent accounts, Oswald repeats his offer of military secrets.  She reports his statements up the Intourist chain-of-command.  Rimma is surprised by the lack of response from authorities.  The Warren Report perhaps mistakenly picks this date as the day Oswald meets with Lev Setyayev    when it states that:

On October 19 Oswald was probably interviewed in his hotel room by a man named Lev Setyayev, who said that he was a reporter for Radio Moscow seeking statements from American tourists about their impressions of Moscow, but who was probably also acting for the KGB. Two years later, Oswald told officials at the American Embassy that he had made a few routine comments to Setyayev of no political significance. The interview with Setyayev may, however, have been the occasion for an attempt by the KGB, in accordance with regular practice, to assess Oswald or even to elicit compromising statements from him; the interview was apparently never broadcast.
[WR  Appendix XIII Biography of Lee Harvey Oswald:  SOVIET UNION]

In two interviews that I conducted with Lev Setyayev in 1991 and 1992, he convinced me that he did not interview Oswald until after October 28 (at the earliest.) Setyayev distinctly remembered interviewing Oswald in the Metropole Hotel, not the Berlin.  The Warren Report  choice of October 19 is probably based on July 11, 1961 Foreign Service despatch which states that Oswald “recalled that he had been interviewed briefly in his room at the Metropole Hotel in Moscow on the third day after his arrival.” 
[CE 935]  However, in view of recent NARA JFK document releases, I have come to suspect that Oswald’s diary might in fact be correct and that Setyayev could have been deliberately misleading me during his 1992 interview.  Setyayev has subsequently refused to give further interviews.

DAY FIVE:  Tuesday, October 20 

On this day, Lee Harvey Oswald was interviewed by the KGB. 

According to KGB Colonel Oleg Nechiporenko’s 1993 book, Passport to Assassination, Oswald was first debriefed by a senior professional intelligence officer from the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (Intelligence), 15th Department (Tourists), on October 20, 1959. The debriefing was conducted by Abram Shaknazarov, a veteran of the Soviet secret police since the 1920’s. For the purposes of the interview, Shaknazarov posed as an official from OVIR (the Visa and Registration Agency) which technically was the conduit for Oswald’s request to remain in the USSR. The interview lasted for approximately ninety minutes.

If, as Nechiporenko claims, Skaknazarov was a veteran of the security forces since the 1920’s, he must have been a remarkable personality.  He not only witnessed and participated in the Stalin purges of the 1930’s, the Second World War, and the execution of his boss Beria following Stalin’s death–but he also survived these events!  (According to historian Robert Conquest, 20,000 Soviet security officers were shot in the Stalin purges–the majority being “old generation” NKVD officers like Shaknazarov.)  How did as experienced a KGB officer as Shaknazarov miss the hints that Oswald was dropping in the previous days that he had something of value to offer the Soviets?  Or did Oswald backtrack on his offer during the interview?  As Shaknazarov is no doubt as dead as Oswald is today, we will probably never know until the KGB opens their file on the specifics of that interview

Is Nechiporenko to be believed?  Nechiporenko was a senior KGB officer who claims to have met (along with KGB officer Velery Kostikov) Oswald in Mexico City during his alleged visit to the Soviet Embassy there in 1963.  Nechiporenko in writing his book, claims to have had access in 1992-1993 to some KGB files on Oswald.  There is no doubt that Oleg Nechiporenko was a senior KGB officer in the highly sensitive Mexico KGB rezidentura.  His history was well known prior to his book although nobody had known he had been with Kostikov during Oswald’s visit at the Soviet Embassy.  With the kind of seniority he enjoyed in the 1960’s (he was expelled from Mexico in 1971) it is conceivable that by the 1990’s he could have sufficient power in the KGB to be able to call on Oswald’s files.  Some (although not specifically this one) Nechiporenko’s claims are being confirmed by the files released in 1999 by Yeltsin.

In Mailer’s interview with Shirakova, she falls silent on what she and Oswald did on that day. Shirakova only says that on Tuesday evening she was informed that Oswald would not be allowed to remain in the USSR.

In his diary, Oswald writes:

Oct. 20. Rimma in the afternoon says Intourist was notified by the pass & visa department [OVIR] that they want to see me; I am excited greatly by this news.

On the same date, the deputy chief of the KGB, Alexander Perepelitsyn, signs a form letter from the KGB to the Supreme Soviet Secretary, stating that in their opinion, granting Oswald citizenship is “inadvisable” or “pointless.”  (netselesoobraznim)  This is a term that will appear in Oswald’s Soviet files for some time to come, which could mean both, “inadvisable” or “pointless.”  In interpreting the KGB’s evaluation of Oswald as a potential defector, the ambiguity of the term will be problematic within the limited scope of the documents declassified in 1999.  If “unadvisable” it may suggest that the KGB fears that Oswald might be a security threat; if “pointless” it suggests that Oswald is considered worthless as an intelligence source.

The KGB form letter recommending that Oswald’s citizenship request be denied. Declassified 1999.

DAY SIX Wednesday, October 21  [ NEXT PAGE ]   

Ahnenerbe-SS  

History/Profile:  The Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society, or Ahnenerbe Forschungs-und Lehrgemeinschaft, was founded in July 1935 by Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Wirth (a Dutch historian obsessed with Atlantean mythology), and Richard Walter Darré (creator of the Nazi “blood and soil” ideology and head of the Race and Settlement Office). There is some evidence that the Ahnenerbe existed as early as 1928, when Wirth established the “Hermann Wirth Society” for teaching and spreading his theories. Another candidate for precursor of the Ahnenerbe was a research institute for “spiritual prehistory” created by the German state of Mecklenburg in 1932, when the state was governed by the NSDAP.

The Ahnenerbe was created as a registered club as a private and non-profit organization. Funding for the Ahnenerbe primarily came through Darré and his position within the German Ministry of Agriculture, but this association ended around 1936, leaving Himmler in total control of the Ahnenerbe. The Ahnenerbe was not incorporated into the SS until April 1940, though even before this, all but one member of the academic and medical staff of the Ahnenerbe were at least honorary members of the SS and many held significant rank. Wolfram Sievers was Reichsgeschäftsführer, or Reich Manager, of the Ahnenerbe from 1935, and held the rank of SS-Obersturmführer since 1937, rising to the rank of SS-Standartenführer by the end of the war. There was an obvious link between the SS and the Ahnenerbe long before it became official in 1940.

The Ahnenerbe was part of Himmler’s greater plan for the systematic creation of a “Germanic” culture that would replace Christianity in the Greater Germany to exist after the war, a kind of SS-religion that would form the basis of the new world order. This new culture would be based on the völkisch beliefs of the Nazis, and it was the role of the Ahnenerbe to marshal scientific research in an interdisciplinary program to reject the “priggish line of high-school professors” and support the “development of the Germanic heritage”. While the Ahnenerbe were fervent Nazis and most of their research was based on racist pseudoscience, they rejected the occult thinking of groups like the Thule Gesellschaft, preferring a pragmatic methodology based on Mendelian genetics, Darwinism, and biology. Fundamentally, the Ahnenerbe was a politically-motivated academic association, albeit with enough funding to go beyond mere lectures and publications to include wide-scale expeditions and experimental research.

Himmler himself served as the “chairman of the Kuratorium” of the Ahnenerbe, and held the real power within the Ahnenerbe. As Reich Manager of the Ahnenerbe, Wolfram Sievers was responsible for all administrative tasks, with day-to-day business matters handled by the deputy “Kurator” Dr. Herrman Reischle. Professor Walter Wüst joined the Ahnenerbe in 1937 and, as trustee and “Kurator” of the organization, replaced Hermann Wirth as its intellectual leader. Wüst had been dean of the University of Munich, and his presence brought a number of reputable academics into the Ahnenerbe. The Ahnenerbe was funded by the Ahnenerbe-Stiftung, the German Forschungsgemeinschaft, member fees, and “from funds of the Reich and from contributions of industry” (including a group of financiers called the Circle of Friends led by Wilhelm Keppler). The budget of the Ahnenerbe was as much as over one million German marks (400,000 American dollars).

Besides financial support, enlistment in the Ahnenerbe was attractive as it placed scholars in the academic elite of Nazi Germany, gaining them the patronage (and sometimes unwelcome attention) of the Reichsführer-SS himself. This academic status did not travel beyond the borders of Nazi-controlled territory, as the Ahnenerbe were considered, even at that time, as a sort of “intellectual criminals”. The Ahnenerbe could also be attractive to those seeking to avoid military service, as its work was considered “war essential”.

A central function of the Ahnenerbe was the publication of materials as part of the effort to investigate and “revive” Germanic traditions. Before the war, the Ahnenerbe set up its own publishing house in the academic suburb Berlin-Dahlem, and went on to produce a monthly magazine (Germanien), two journals on genealogy (Zeitschrift für Namenforschung and Das Sippenzeichen), and countless monographs.

The Ahnenerbe had fifty different research branches named “Institutes”, which carried out more than one hundred extensive research projects. Some of the institutes, particularly those responsible for Tibetan research and archaeological expeditions, could be quite large, but most made do with less than a dozen personnel. For example, the staff for experiments to make sea-water drinkable consisted of a supervisor, three medical chemists, one female assistant, and three non-commissioned officers. The two-year musicology project to study folk music in South Tyrol consisted of one Ahnenerbe researcher and eight local collaborators.

Linguistic study was at the forefront of Ahnenerbe activity. The first institute to be established specialized in the study of Norse runes (the symbol of the Ahnenerbe was the life rune). This institute was under the command of Hermann Wirth until he left the Ahnenerbe in 1937. In 1936, Wirth’s successor, Professor Wüst, headed up another institute for broader research in linguistics, where great attention was paid to Sanskrit (Wüst’s area-of-expertise) and the connection of the language to the Aryans.

The Institute for Germanic Archaeology was created in 1938. Archaeological excavations were conducted in Germany at Paderborn, Detmold, Haithabu, and at Externsteine. Haithabu, which is still recognized by archaeologists as an important site for medieval Norse artifacts, is in an area of northern Germany near the Danish border, and is very close to Detmold and Externsteine, the site of a much-reputed Aryan temple and which some legends connected with Yggdrasil, the “World-Ash” of Norse mythology. Externsteine is also close to Paderborn and Wewelsburg, and the entire sites compromised for the Ahnenerbe a mythological heartland where the Saxons resisted the Romans and their heirs, the Franks of Charlemagne. The area was also sympathetic to the ideology of the Ahnenerbe, as Detmold was one of the first German states to elect an NSDAP government, and Paderborn and Wewelsburg were strongholds of Prussian beliefs.

During the war, archaeological expeditions were sent to Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Poland, and Rumania with the collaboration of local authorities. The Ahnenerbe also conducted similar operations in occupied Russia and North Africa. They were also very active in the Far East, mostly in Tibet, but the Ahnenerbe did send an expedition to Kafiristan.

A significant amount of Ahnenerbe research involved Tibet, and was carried out by the Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asian Research. The institute was named for the famous Swedish explorer whose memoirs My Life As An Explorer were popular worldwide for their tales of Hedin’s travels throughout Tibet. Hedin’s descriptions of hidden cities deep within the Himalayas were as much a source for Nazi interest in Tibet as Blavatsky’s theosophical vision of the East. Though never an official member of the Ahnenerbe (the old explorer was in his seventies during the war), Hedin corresponded with the organization and was present when the Institute for Inner Asian Research was formally established in Munich on January 1943.

Hedin’s closest contact in the Ahnenerbe was Ernst Schäfer, who commanded the Institute for Inner Asian Research and was eventually responsible for all scientific projects within the Ahnenerbe. Schäfer first visited Tibet in 1930, on an expedition organized by the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. In 1931, he returned to Tibet while a member of the American Brooke Dolan expedition that also visited Siberia and China (another Brooke Dolan expedition funded by the OSS travelled to Tibet in 1942, following in the footsteps of the 1939 SS-Tibet mission). He joined the Nazi Party after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, as well as the SS, rising to the rank of Sturmbannführer in 1942. Schäfer travelled throughout the East and Central Tibet from 1934 to 1936, and lead an ambitious Ahnenerbe-sponsored expedition into the Himalayas in 1939. In Tibet, the Ahnenerbe sought their own twisted brand of Shangri-La, a source of the Germanic superman and a repository of lost Aryan knowledge.

The SS-Tibet expedition lead by Schäfer visited Tibet between April 1938 and August 1939. The purpose of the expedition was to acquire flora and fauna specimens, to perform an ethnological survey of the populace, and to gather cultural information on the Tibetans that included everything from their religious practices to the sexual positions used by older monks during homosexual relations with young adepts. There were rumors of secret tasks that included the SS making overtures to the Reting Regent to lay the groundwork for a German invasion of India through Tibet (if such a scheme had been formulated, Stalingrad stopped it cold). Schäfer was also rumored to be tasked with (dis)proving the “missing link” between apes and humans by collecting specimens that would prove his theory that the Abominable Snowman or Yeti was in fact nothing more than a species of bear that roamed between Nepal and Tibet. Schäfer failed to bag his “Yeti” bear, but the expedition did gather over fifty live animals that were sent back to Germany. Another interesting acquisition of the expedition was the 108-volume sacred document of the Tibetans, the Kangschur. Besides espionage and hunting for the Abominable Snowman, the SS-Tibet expedition may have also been involved in “geophysical” research to prove the “World Ice Theory”, which may have included the search for fossilized remains of “giants” as part of the cosmology of the theory (more below).

The Ahnenerbe had an Institute to study the Eddas (considered by Himmler a sacred text) and Iceland itself, which the Ahnenerbe considered something of a holy land, like Tibet. Based on the ariosophical beliefs like those that gave rise to the Thule Gesellschaft, the Ahnenerbe saw Iceland as the last surviving connection with Thule, the mystical homeland of the pure Germanic race of prehistory. The Eddas contained secret knowledge for the Ahnenerbe, keys by which they could unlock their ancestral heritage. Besides study of the Eddas, the Ahnenerbe also wanted to study Icelandic artifacts, and, as they had in Tibet, perform “the recording of human images”, using calipers to measure facial dimensions based on ethnological pseudoscience.

The Ahnenerbe succeeded in sending a mission to Iceland in 1938, but it was a thorough failure. On orders from Himmler himself, the expedition was to search for a hof, a place of worship of Norse gods such as Thor and Odin. The expedition ultimately failed as the Reichsbank lacked sufficient amounts of Icelandic kronur to fund their expenses, mainly due to German restrictions on foreign currency. The Icelandic officials also denied the Ahnenerbe permission to excavate in certain areas, and though the Ahnenerbe did find a cave they claimed to be Himmler’s hof, it proved to have not been inhabited before the eighteenth century. The Ahnenerbe lost the opportunity for any further expeditions after Iceland was occupied by the US Marine Corps and British forces in mid-1941 to prevent its invasion by Germany.

Another Institute was devoted to musicology, collecting and analyzing everything from folk music to Gregorian chants (Himmler’s pet project) to determine the essence of German music. Folk music was recorded during expeditions in Finland and the Faroe Islands, from ethnic Germans transported from occupied territories, and most significantly, in South Tyrol. The Ahenerbe made sound recordings, transcribed manuscripts and songbooks, and photographed and even made silent films of instrument use and folk dances. The lur, a Bronze Age musical instrument, became central to this research, which concluded that Germanic consonance was in direct conflict to Jewish atonalism. Connections in musical traditions was even used as evidence of a Germanic presence in occupied territories and thus another excuse for the military invasions that established “Greater Germany”.

One of the stranger institutes of the Ahnenerbe researched the Welteislehre (World Ice Theory) of Hans Hörbiger, under the command of Dr. Hans Robert Scultetus. This truly odd theory was based on the Blavatsky thesis that there had been several moons in the past, that the approach of these moons results in a polar shift and a cataclysmic Ice Age, which are responsible for the fall and rise of the various root-races of Theosophy. According to the theory, the world itself was created when a giant chunk of ice collided with the sun. Hörbiger died in 1931, but his theory was adopted by some Theosophists, South American occultists who used it to prove the existence of Andean civilization with parallels to Atlantis and Thule (this may have been part of the reason behind Ahnenerbe expeditions to South America), and by Himmler and the Ahnenerbe, as “our Nordic ancestors grew strong amidst the ice and snow, and this is why a belief in a world of ice is the natural heritage of Nordic men”. The Ahnenerbe were most concerned with practical applications of the World Ice Theory focused on meteorology, vital to military operations. Scultetus sent Edmund Kiß, a German playwright well-known for his novels on Atlantis, to Abyssinia to find evidence to support the World Ice Theory. German rocketry may have even been delayed because of fears based on Hörbiger’s theory that a rocket released into space would initiate a global catastrophe.

The most infamous section of the Ahnenerbe was the Institute for Scientific Research for Military Purposes, which carried out experiments under “Secret” or “Top Secret” classification and was funded by the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht. This “research” included hideous experiments on live human beings, prisoners procured by the Ahnenerbe from Dachau and other concentration camps. Over one hundred skeletons were collected by Professor August Hirt, several from live subjects, and he was assisted in his work by former ethnologists of the SS-Tibet expedition of 1939. Hirt was also involved in the feeding of mescaline to concentration camp inmates to determine its effects.

The most notorious among those who worked in the Institute for Scientific Research for Military Purposes was Dr. Sigmund Rascher, a Luftwaffe medical officer, a Hauptsturmführer in the SS, and a member of the Ahnenerbe. Rascher was in charge of the Institute’s experiments at Dachau, and was the first to request “test subjects”, who were frozen in low-pressure chambers and vats of icy water, and then experimented upon with attempts to rewarm them using sleeping bags, boiling water, and intercourse with incarcerated prostitutes from the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Those who survived the experiments were shot. Rascher also had the skulls of “test subjects” split open while conscious to examine their brains. He developed the standard form of cynanide capsules used by the SS, one of which would be used by Himmler to commit suicide. In 1945, Rascher was executed by the SS due to a plot with his wife to pass off kidnapped children as their own.

The Ahnenerbe also had institutes conducting Celtic studies, investigating popular traditions, and assisting in the creation of the SS-Order Castle at Wewelsburg. It was rumored that the foreign expeditions of the Ahnenerbe were a cover for German espionage, but there is no evidence of significant intelligence activity. The Ahnenerbe was also responsible for “cultural-political” (kulturpolitisch) missions in occupied “Germanic” countries (ie. Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands), spreading propaganda throughout the local population and recruiting for the volunteer divisions of the Waffen-SS. These missions worked with local pro-German political factions and academics to “revive” and promote Germanic culture and spread Nazi ideology. This was carried out through academic journals, popular magazines, exhibitions, and lectures which promoted the Ahnenerbe viewpoint, as well as censoring those academics that did not fall into line. Another wartime function of the Ahnenerbe was the acquisition of artifacts, as they seized and collected documents, paintings, sculpture, pottery and other items considered “Germanic” and “returned” them to Nazi Germany.

The interest of the Ahnenerbe in Germanic history and pre-history often put them at odds with others involved in such research. Chief among their rivals was Alfred Rosenberg, who was butting heads with Hermann Wirth even before the Ahnenerbe was created. Another rival of a sort was Karl Maria Wiligut, or “Weisthor”, the head of the Department for Pre- and Early History in the RuSHA (Race and Settlement Office) and Himmler’s personal Aryan mystic. The Ahnenerbe was forced to work with Wiligut due to the his close association with the Reichsführer-SS, though they considered Wiligut and his associates to be the “worst kind of fantasist”. This attitude was typical of the academics in the Ahnenerbe, who bemoaned occult interest in the topics they studied, feeling that it impeded the “science” of their research. It is interesting to note that Wiligut fell from power in 1939, just one year before the Ahnenerbe was officially made a department of the SS.

To avoid Allied bombing, the Ahnenerbe relocated to Waischenfeld in Franconia on August 1943. There they remained until American forces took the city in April 1945. The war ended before the Ahnenerbe found another permanent home, and, during the interim period, a great number of documents were destroyed. Had the Ahnenerbe survived the war, Himmler planned to use its members to staff an SS-University at Leyden in the Netherlands. Those that survived the war were either tried for war crimes, or faded back into academia under their own or false names.

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The dualist Cathar heretic religion has been over time both demonized and romanticized.  At the peak of their existence in 13th century Europe, primarily in France and Italy, they were characterized as satanic demon worshipers.  Today the Cathars are most often portrayed as pacifist vegetarian feminists; medieval New Agers who were ruthlessly put down by a supposedly reactionary and corrupt Catholic Church. While there are elements of some truth in these portrayals, the reality of the Cathar faith falls somewhat short of the fuzzy-warm puppy-loving reputation attributed to it.

The origin of Cathar beliefs has never been precisely identified, but most historians link them to the dualist Bogomil sect in the Byzantine sphere.  Like the Bogomils, Cathars were Christian dualists–a doctrine that has existed in various forms as long as there has been Christianity and before. The dualists attempt to confront the question of how can a God that is all powerful, merciful and good, allow monstrous evil to exist. Their response is that there must be two equally powerful gods–one good and one evil. Unlike Christianity, which demoted Satan beneath God’s authority, dualists see the forces of evil and good as equally powerful.

According to the Cathar approach to dualism, a good god made the heavens and the human soul, while an evil god entrapped that soul to suffer in the flesh of the human body and in material and worldly things of the earth–an evil place.  Salvation, according to the Cathars, lay in the human soul’s escape to the spiritual realm from its prison of flesh in the material world.

Cathars rejected sex as a continuation of the human soul’s entrapment in earth-bound carnal evil. According to Cathars, marriage was a form of prostitution. Children were born as demons until they could be consciously lead to choose salvation in the Cathar path.  Cathars believed that the human soul could pass on its journey through animal life, thus they were vegetarians: they did not eat meat, eggs, cheese or any fat except vegetable oil and fish. The Cathars rejected oath taking and violence in principle; they conveniently hired mercenaries to do violence on their behalf.  

Cathars considered themselves Christians but rejected the Old Testament and the vengeful and angry God described within it. The God of the Old Testament was the one who created the world, thus he was the other “evil” god.  The values, however, such as the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament were espoused by the Cathars. They rejected the humanity of Jesus and the doctrine of virgin birth, insisting that Christ was pure spirit which was “concealed” until birth in Mary’s body–she had no power of intercession.   They did not believe that Christ died on the cross, as Christ could only be spirit and they rejected any idea of bodily resurrection, since material things of the body were evil.  It is unclear what sort of burial or cremation rites were practiced by Cathars.  

The origin of the term Cathar is in dispute. Some link it to the Greek term katharos–“pure.” Some historians believe that the term Cathar comes from a 12th century German play on words implying that the Cathars kissed cats’ asses. In France, the Cathars were insultingly know as Texerants–from the practice of weaving–a trade considered in medieval times as an inhonesta mercimonia--an questionable activity practiced in cellars and prohibited to Catholic priests. As for themselves, the Cathars only referred to themselves as “good Christians” and their church as “The Church of God.”

The Cathar religion was divided between a majority of  credenti–(croyants)–the believers, or followers, and a minority of  perfecti–(parfaits)–the “perfect ones”–those who had committed themselves to the celibate and dietary rigors of the Cathar faith and had passed through a ritual known as consolamentum–“consoling”–a type of Cathar born-again baptism carried through with a laying of hands instead of water.  Only perfecti were considered as “members” of the Church.

The Cathars had no lavish church properties–services were held in homes or out in fields and forests. But while there were no priests as in the Catholic Church, the perfecti in fact functioned as priests–in a manner more restrictive than in the Catholic Church. In the Cathar Church, a mere credent was considered too impure to have his or her prayer heard by God.  Only the perfecti’s prayer could reach the ears of God.  The credenti were required to abase themselves before the perfecti and beg them to pray for their souls in a ritual known as the melioramentum. The credent would fall to their knees and place their palms to the ground, bowing deeply three times and begging the perfect to pray on his or her behalf: “Bless us Lord”, or “good Christian” or “good Lady” and on the third bow, “Lord, pray God for this sinner that he deliver him from an evil death and lead him to a good end.”

The fact that women could become a perfecta and perform the melioramentum leads many modern commentators to portray the Cathar Church as a feminist institution where both men and women served equally as church functionaries. That was not the case in fact.  The Cathar religion had an episcopate as structured as that of the Catholic Church, with territorial titles and geographical demarcations of dioceses, and an ambitious leadership. There were elected Cathar bishops, two subordinate ranks of filius major and filius minor and a diaconate. These were exclusively the domain of males:  none of these positions were open to female perfectae.

Nor were female perfectae allowed to perform the ritual of consolomentum; the raising of a credent to the rank of a perfect was also an exclusive privilege of male Cathar perfecti.

While not expressly forbidden, female perfectae did not preach extensively either, as often implied by modern rosy accounts of the Cathars. In the records of the Languedoc Inquisition of 1245-46, female perfectae are reported in witness statements on 1,435 occasions–but only on twelve of those occasions are they reported to be preaching. Of three hundred eighteen named perfectae, only eleven are identified as having preached.¹ In other words, Cathar perfectae basically had a status not much different from Catholic nuns, the primary difference being that they were not cloistered and isolated from the populace as were Catholic nuns.  Moreover, there was a foundation of class behind those female perfectae who preached–almost all leading women in the Cathar Church came from powerful noble families and by virtue of their secular education, wealth, and power, they gathered around them both male and female followers.

Catharism was in some ways darkly hostile to maternity and family. Pregnant credents were admonished that they carried demons in their bellies. A perfecta advised a follower to pray to God that she be liberated from the demon in her belly; another warned a pregnant woman that if she died in pregnancy she could not be saved.² Because the Cathars believed that baptism had to be consciously understood, children who died in infancy could not be considered as saved either.

Statistical analysis of Inquisition records show that of 719 identified active perfecti and perfectae, 318 were women — a little under 45 percent.  This is a very high number, compared to how many women were nuns in the Catholic Church compared to all the priests, officials, monks, friars, clerks and other men engaged in official Church duty.  Thus the elite strata of the faith drew women.  On the other hand, in analyzing 466 identified credenti followers or believers, only 125 were women — roughly 28 percent–indicating that Cathar beliefs were of less interest to the average medieval woman, who probably found the anti-procreative ideology repellent.  Nonetheless, female perfectae played a more direct and crucial role in forming and sustaining Cathar nuclei; as there were no formal churches, their homes became religious centers.  

The Cathar Church in comparison to the corrupt practices of the medieval Catholic Church, was an honest and dedicated movement that rejected the trappings of wealth, lust and power.  There were no church buildings or property.  The Cathar Church did not demand tithes of its members and it educated its children, both male and female.  As such it was a threat to the Catholic Church, and after numerous failed attempts to sway Cathar followers away by persuasion, the Pope finally sponsored a bloody crusade to put down the Cathars by fire and sword in 1209.

1. Medieval Studies,XLI, (1979), pp. 227-228
2. Wakefield Journal of Medieval History, XII, pp. 232-233
   and  Lambert, Malcolm The Cathars  Oxford:1998. p.151

NEXT PAGE: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MONTSEGUR

When Toronto City Council had finally admitted to the failings of the Toronto Police several years earlier in 1855, it found that one of the principal problems was the ability and experience of the Chief of Police Samuel Sherwood:

The Committee are not aware that any change or want of zeal or activity in the discharge of his duties (so far as he acquainted with it) has ever been established against the Chief of Police but there can be no doubt that he has not that authority over his men or that degree of experience which is absolutely essential to enable him to enforce a proper system of order and discipline.

The City’s committee on the Circus Riot had recommended in 1855 that the London Police be approached for a candidate from that force to take charge in Toronto.   But when it came to hire a Chief for the new force in 1859, Toronto instead chose a military officer and not an experience police officer from the London Police.  The new Police Chief was William Stratton Prince, a former Captain of the 71^st Highland Light Infantry.  There is a remarkable paucity of biographical detail on Prince and detail on how his candidacy and appointment unfolded.  His regimental history, however, hints at the qualifications that Prince brought to the job. 

The 71^st Highland Light Infantry was first formed in Glasgow in 1758 and was for the next century one of Britain’s most battle hardened regiments.  It fought in America during the War of Independence. The regiment served under Lord Cornwallis in the Carolinas and Virginia, and was included in the surrender at Yorktown, 17th October, 1781; 1782-83 it fought in Southern India; Fought at Conjeveram, Porto Novo, Sholinghur, Vellore, Cuddalore, and Arcot;  1790-1 campaigns against Tippoo Sahib, siege of Pondicherry,  Bangalore, Seringapatam;

1805-06 assault landing at the Cape of Good Hope and the battle of Blauberg;  1806-07 assault and capture of Buenos Aires;  1808-09 First Peninsular Campaigns; 1809 Walcharen Expedition; 1810-14 Second Peninsular Campaigns; 1815 at Waterloo took part in breaking the last charge of Napoleon’s Old Guard;  Army of Occupation, France 1815-17 : England and Ireland 1818-23 : Canada 1824-30 : Bermuda 1831-33 : Scotland and Ireland 1834-37: Canada, suppressing rebellion and preventing American infiltration attempts 1838-42 : West Indies 1843-46 : England, Scotland and Ireland 1847-52 : Corfu 1853-54.

William Stratton Prince was the son of Colonel John Prince, who commanded the forces engaging the rebels at Windsor in 1838, where he summarily shot rebel prisoners captured there.  If Toronto was more concerned about rebellion and disorder than crime fighting, then certainly they had a new Police Chief with rebel-fighting both in his blood and his regimental history. (See more on William Stratton Prince on the next page.)

It appears that upon closer consideration, London was not an appropriate model for the Toronto Board of Police Commissioner’s plans for the Toronto Police.  London’s problems and size in 1859 were not comparable to the situation in which Toronto was developing.   US police forces were more appropriate to the task, and several were studied, including those in New York, Boston, Albany, and Portland, from which Boston was finally chosen as the best example applicable to Toronto for the systemic regulations of police patrols.  The Police Commissioners reported,  “Those of the Boston system seems the most applicable to the city of Toronto, and that system has the reputation of being the best and most effective of all the cities in the States.”

The number of constables was fixed at sixty, being “something under one policeman to each 800 inhabitants, which, as compared with populations, is a less number of policement [sic] to a given population than the average number in the cities of the United States to which a reference has been made, while in the city of London, England, there are 6000 policemen in a population of 2 million, being one police man to every 333 inhabitants.”  The Commissioners, “found, whenever there is a mixed population and a good deal of intercourse by travel, that one policeman to about eight hundred of the population is thought to be necessary.”

The Board also reported,  “In the opinion of the Commissioners no division of labour which provides less than three changes or reliefs in every 24 hours can be accomplished without greatly endangering the efficiency as well as the health and life of the police forces.”  Toronto finally had a municipal night watch.

It was decided to dismiss the entire police force: “The Commissioners resolved as a first, and the least invidious step, to dissolve the existing force altogether, and to appoint or re-appoint to the new force such persons only as after a close examination should prove qualified to discharge the police duties, giving the preference in anything like equal qualifications to the members of the old force.”

As previously pointed out, only half of the old Toronto Police Force were rehired and most were post-Circus Riot recruits, hired under Toronto’s unilateral board of commissioner “experiment” of 1857-58 prior to the Province’s amendment of the Municipality Act.  Fifty-eight constables were actually hired, of which 5 were Presbyterian, 8 Roman Catholic including one of the three Sergeant-Majors, while the remaining 45 were Anglican Episcopalians.  At least forty-two constables were Irish, but the nominal and descriptive roll is illegible in portions and a final tally is difficult to determine. (The slightly modified force of the following year shows forty-four Irish constables in a force of 56.)  Eight had served in the military, while 19 served on other British police forces, the majority in the Irish Constabulary. The propensity was to hire constable from outside the community of Toronto.

CLICK HERE FOR THE  NOMINAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ROLL OF CONSTABLES ON THE TORONTO POLICE FORCE IN 1860

This distancing of Toronto police officers from the inhabitants of the city characterized the new constabulary from the first order issued by the new Chief of Police on February 10, 1859:

Orders
No. 1   Police when on their Beat are on no account to loiter or enter into conversation with passengers in the streets.  Should any one address them by asking a question with regards to the locality of any place they will give what information they may have in their power as short as possible, and resume their patrol.

Subsequent orders further delineated the distance Toronto Police officers were to keep from the citizenry:

The men of the Force are given to understand that they are not permitted to lodge at hotels on any account whatever.  Constables must have their own private lodgings and on no account be seen lounging and talking about bar rooms and public houses.

It will be the duty of the non-commissioned officer to see that their men reside at the houses of respectable parties.  New appointments will also report personally to the Chief the name of the parties they board with and the street and number of the house.  The Force are again reminded that residence in saloons and public houses will not be permitted.

The Chief exerted strict control over virtually every aspect of the police officer’s lives.  Unmarried officers were housed in special barracks and those wanting to marry, had to get approval from the Chief to do so and for their subsequent place of residence which was restricted to “respectable areas” of the city.  Even how officers ate, was a matter of concern for Chief Prince:

The Chief Constable requests the Constables on taking their meals will be respectfully dressed or, he will issue an order to enforce it, he trusts that the majority of the constables out of respect for themselves and what is due to the respectability of the Force, will report to the Chief Constable any constable guilty of an act of gross indecency of this kind, as sitting down with his coat off as conduct of this kind is nothing more or less than a disgrace to the force and will be treated as such. 

The constables did not take Chief Prince’s military discipline lightly, even though many had previous military experience.  In 1872 Prince introduced ‘beat cards’ which scheduled minute by minute where constables were to be on their beat.  The Toronto Police officers threatened to go on strike if Prince and two sergeants did not resign and the ‘beat card’ system was not abandoned.  The Board of Commissioners responded by firing the entire force, and when defeated constables began to trickle in requesting their jobs back, sixteen of them were not rehired.  In an era when organized labour strikes were rare, it is remarkable to see the Toronto Police among those attempting to take labour action.  (The Toronto Police would strike again in 1918.)

Along with their desirable character traits, Toronto’s constables were assigned a social class category.  The Toronto police officer, in the estimation of Chief William Prince:

Should be in the prime of manhood, mentally and bodily; shrewd, intelligent and possessed of a good English education; trustworthy, truthful, and of a general good character, in order to command a moral as well as an official influence over those among whom he may be required to act, and subject to the most rigid discipline; he should, in fact, be a man above the class of labourers and equal, if not superior, to the most responsible class of journeymen mechanics.

The Toronto Police were thoroughly imbued with military discipline:

The position of “attention” that position which the officers and constables will present at all times in addressing the Bench, and in giving evidence and indeed at all times on being questioned on points of duty, is as follows:  The heels must be in a line and closed — the knees straight — the toes turned out so that the feet may form an angle of 60 degrees — the arms hanging straight down for the shoulders — the elbows turned in and close to the sides — the thumb kept close to the forefinger — the Head to be bent and in giving evidence the body, arms and hands to be perfectly steady — in fact —  exactly the same position as a soldier in the Ranks or parade addressing his Officer.       

Individually Toronto Police officers were expected to perform their duties with moderation in their use of force:

In the arrest of criminals and disorderly characters, drunkards, especially the latter, men are cautioned against the unnecessary use of the baton when persuasion and a little patience on the part of the policeman would suppress all violence on the part of those arrested.             

This was strictly enforced when a constable was suspended for giving a prostitute on his beat a kick:

P.C. Taylor was suspended and brought before the commissioners of police to answer to a complaint preferred against him for having wantonly used violence to a woman of bad character in Church Street by giving her a kick.  The commissioners find the complaint is correct and caution the said constable to be more careful for the future.  Violence is not on any account to be used except in self defense or in prisoners resisting – and it is absurd to a degree that constables should loose all control over their tempers on being abused by a drunken woman.  Constables are supposed to be above caring for abuse from persons of that description.

While Toronto Police officers were urged towards moderating the use of force in the performance of their individual duties, they were drilled incessantly in the use of highly lethal collective force.  Drill took place three times a week and infantry manuals were distributed to the Sergeant Majors who were expected to drill the constables in battlefield maneuvers.  The nature of these drills are vividly outlined in this extract of Chief Prince’s complex orders for the procedure of clearing streets by the use of highly concentrated and coordinated rifle fire:

The following is the order in which street firing is conducted, and in order that men should have a theoretical knowledge of the same as well as practical, the following is a description of the drill with regard to clearing streets.

The company being in column of subdivisions — the commander of the leading subdivision will give the word, “Right (or left) Subdivision”  “Ready”  “Present”  “Shoulder Arms”  “Four Deep” and remain steady.  The commander of the rear subdivision at the same time giving the following words of command  “Rear Subdivision”  “Four Deep”  “by the left, Quick March.”  The subdivision will then advance passing through the opening of fours of the Front subdivision and when advanced 20 paces will halt.  The commander of the right subdivision will immediately on the left passing through it, give the word of command, “Front”  “Load” then “Shoulder Arms”  “by the left, Quick March” whilst the commander of the then leading subdivision immediately on the rear one receiving the word Quick March, will give the word of command, “left Subdivision”   “Ready”  “present”  “Shoulder Arms”  “Four deep” — and the right subdivision forming four deep advancing, will proceed through the left halting at 20 paces in front, the rear subdivision at the same time loading as before directed, and thus the subdivisions will advance and fire alternately.

The street skirmishing drill, prepared specially also for the Toronto Police Force, is peculiarly a Police drill.  The expeditious movement of sections or small detachments in close or extended order from point to point with the fewest possible words of command is the object sought to be attained.  A section or any portion of a company can be extended or moved to cover a given point almost instantaneously on a single word of command, and as readily reformed, without any regard to the position occupied by the front or rear ranks.  All movements are executed on the double, and have been studied out with a view to a more speedy and effectual suppression or riots and street disturbances.

While the Irish Catholic population was already singled out as a threat within the city by virtue of their home history, poverty, ethnicity, and unskilled labour status, the Fenian Raids and D’Arcy McGee’s assassination in Ottawa, further cast aspersions on the Irish Catholics and positioned them as targets of police attention.  The mostly Protestant Toronto constables were often accused of acting with prejudicial hostility towards Irish Catholics.   But in 1875 during huge Catholic processions in Toronto which came under attack by armed Orange mobs, the Toronto Police distinguished themselves not only in their defense of the Catholics, but also for the coolness in the face of the mobs.  Despite numerous handgun shots and thrown rocks, the police did not return fire and several constables sustained injuries protecting the Catholic procession.  The archdioceses conducted a large cash collection on behalf of the constables in gratitude, and the issue of systemic Toronto Police hostility towards Irish Catholics was put to rest that year.  When in 1878, American Fenian O’Donovan Rossa visited Toronto to speak at St. Patrick’s Hall, Toronto Police efficiently and coolly protected him from angry Orange mobs.   In the future, the potential military might of the Toronto Police was increasingly directed towards threats from labour unions, as it was against workers during the Street Railway Company Strike in 1886. 

While Orange vs. Green clashes in the streets diminished, the Toronto Police were still not about to be deployed as the proactive anti-crime force we associate with municipal policing today.

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NEXT MAP  

Limestone Ridge Terrain
June 2, 1866After map by Captain Alexander H. Askin, 13th Battalion Hamilton Volunteer Infantry in Alexander Somerville, Narrative of the the Fenian Invasion,

Hamilton, ON:  Joseph Lyght, 1866.

Map by Peter Vronsky

How to find journals online at Ryerson Library website.

For example: Richard Bessel, “The Nazi Capture of Power” in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol 39, No. 2, 2004.   pp 169-188. 

STEP 1.  Go to Ryerson Library Search page and enter name of desired journal title (Journal of Contemporary History) in the Journal Title search menu.  Click “search.”

STEP 2.  Select the “electronic resource” version of the item.

STEP 3.  Connect to available sources.

STEP 4.  Choose one of the available “FULL TEXT” sources that covers the required date of  the article.  You will be asked to log-in with your Ryerson I.D. number.

STEP 5.  Find and select the required issue (Vol. 39, No. 2, April 2004)

STEP 6.  Right-Button Mouse Click (Windows) on the desired “Article Full Text PDF” Link which will open a small menu box.  Select “Save target as…” command from the menu box..

STEP 7.   Download and save the file to your computer by clicking “save”.  You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read and print the file.  (You probably have it already on your system, otherwise download it free from www.adobe.com)

Excerpts from Oswald’s essay on Minsk and the factory.   (c. June 1962)
( Source:  CE 92 & CE 94)

Upon his return to the USA in 1962, Oswald hired a secretary to type and correct his handwritten essay about Minsk.  He ran out of money before all the pages could be typed.  These are excerpts from both the typed and handwritten pages, in a version correcting the grammatical and spelling errors that Oswald’s dyslexia caused in his writings.    

This factory manufactures 87,000 large and powerful radios and 60,000 television sets in various sizes and ranges, excluding pocket radios, which are not mass-produced anywhere in the USSR.  It is this plant which manufactured several console model combination radio-phonograph-television sets which were shown as mass-produced items of commerce before several hundreds of thousands of Americans at the Soviet Exposition in New York in 1959.  After the Exhibition, these sets were duly shipped back to Minsk and are now stored in a special storage room on the first floor of the Administrative Building–at this factory, ready for the next International Exhibit.  

I worked for 23 months [ a typo.  Oswald worked 28 months ]  at this plant, a fine example of average and even slightly better than average working conditions.  The plant covers an area of 25 acres in a district one block north of the main thoroughfare and only two mile from the center of the City with all facilities for the mass production of radios and televisions.  It employs 5,000 full time and 300 part-time workers, 58% women and girls.

Five hundred people during the day shift are employed on the huge stamp and pressing machines where sheet metal is turned into metal frames and cabinets for television sets and radios.

Another five hundred people are employed in an adjoining building for cutting and finishing of rough wood into fine polished cabinets.  A laborer’s process, mostly done by hand, the cutting, trimming and the processes right up to hand-polishing are carried out here at the same plant.  The plant also has stamp-making plant, employing 150 people at or assisting at 80 heavy machine lathes and grinders.  The noise in this shop is almost deafening as metal grinds against metal and steel saws cut through iron ingots at the rate of an inch a minute.  The floor is covered with oil used to drain the heat of metal being worked so one has to watch one’s footing; here the workers’ hands are as black as the floor and seem to be eternally…

For a good cross-section of the Russian working class, I suggest we examine the lives of some of the 58 workers and 5 foremen working in the experimental shop of the Minsk radio plant…

The shop itself is located in a two-story building with no particular noticeable mark on its red brick face.  By 8:00 A.M. sharp all the workers have arrived and at the sound of a bell sounded by the orderly, who is a worker whose duty it is to see the workers don’t slip out for too many smokes, they file upstairs, except for 10 turners and lathe operators whose machines are located on the first floor.  Work here is given out in the form of blueprints and drawings by the foreman Zonof and junior foreman Lavruk to workers whose various reliability and skills call for them, since each worker has with time acquired differing skills and knowledge.