“On the Other Side of the Elbe”

● The first eight paragraphs of an article in the newspaper Il Tempo, Rome, Italy, of August 8, 1954, deal with the case of Otto John, who fled into the Russian zone. The ninth paragraph states: “In the meantime, on the other side of the Elbe, the wave of arrests continues. The religious organization ‘Jehovah’s witnesses,’ an evangelical sect that the Russians have been persecuting for various months, declares to have lost 1,334 of their members, all arrested and sentenced to a total of 8,466 years of imprisonment. Twenty-four of the arrested men are said to have died in prison. It is calculated that in the political prisons on the other side of the Elbe there are at present 23,000 persons, almost entirely German citizens, while the number that is convicted and deported in Russia or in the other countries of the Iron Curtain is said to be 28,000.”