The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1932-07-23

The following vivid account of
fascist terror in Berlin appeared
recently in the Daily Worker of
Great Britain. The author is an
English worker who was an eye
witness to these events.
TATE on Thursday afternoon 600
Il picked Fascists were stationed IN
a Private Hotel on the edge OF the
working class quarter Of Berlin. They
had expressed their intention Of
holding a demonstrative parade
through this red neighborhood in the
hopes of intimidating the more back
ward workers into supporting Hitler
h the coming elections.
| BY half past five the main shopping
ltreet was seething with people, and
the three car loads of police already
protecting the Fascist base were re-
inforced by at least dozen others.
The street is like any working-class
shopping area on a Saturday night.
On every corner spreading out into
the road large groups Of workers are
arguing soberly and earnestly.
In the road squads Of Red Front
Fighters march, accompanied, in
many cases, by uniformed rank
and-tIle members OF the Social
Democratic Labor military or
ganization. Every now and then a
clear slogan rises above the market
noises from some group of workers,
Forward the Red United Front,
and the reply, Forward, Forward
Forward" roars out from thousands
Of threats, from the youngest chill
dren to the oldest housewife, who
knows what capitalism has done
for her family.
/. A police wagon, driving rapidly
along the pavement almost touching
the shop windows, suddenly stops and
land thirty or more policemen, armed
with blackjacks and heavy revolvers,
rush into the crowd yelling at the
tops of their voices, beating at any
body and everybody With their
weapons.
A few workers are arrested, pre-
sumably for the crime OF being in tbs
street, and having their heads broken
by the police. But again and again
the slogans go up-Down with F'as-
cisrn-Down, Down, Down. Then an
other charge further off and more
slogans, the mased workers swaying
from one side of the street to the
other, the struggle continuing hour
after hour and all the time six hum
bred picked Fascists are waiting to
make their escape when the police
have beaten the workers off the
streets. -
BY ten O'Clock the situation had
become extremely tense-two long
4reets of working class flats were in
complete darkness and were barri-
Saded at each end with huge iron
dustbins, old beds and mattresses,
planks and rubbish. A police lorry
was stationed at the end of Rostoker
Strasse with a searchlight playing
slowly up and down the sides of the
tall decaying houses and along the
street; sometimes the light picked out
a dark group of workers in a door
way and remained still invariably
stimulating the group into giving the
lead for a slogan-Down with Police
and Fascist Terrorism; Down, Down,
Down--rings the reply from all the
windows and doorways Of these six
seoy tenement houses.
Mo wand again the police risk a
punitive expedition" and charge a
/ particular group. From one doorway
the police can be seen manoeuvering
along the pavement over the bar
ricade (Which is to prevent the police
cars patrolling up and down, and at
lacking without warning), suddenly
they charged silently in the dark
htreet-the tallness of the houses ex-
Nlggerated by the darkness and the
| Hack forms of the police made smaller
and more nenacing.
We melted through an archway
into a pitch dark courtyard, while
an elderly working woman waited
stoIidly until the last man was in
before she slammed the huge door
to and turned the key. The police
must now smash in the door and
fight us on our own ground in the
dark, or give it up-they decided
not to fight.
Up to this time the workers had
been purely on the defensive, fight
ing only for their rights to the
streets. The efforts of the police to
COW the workers-to beat them off
their own streets SO that 900 Fascists
from the bourgeois quarter could
have sole use of them had hardly
shaken the good temper, much less
the spirit, of the workers
\ But now the increasing brutality
oNthe attack resulted in stiffening
Qthe determination of the workers,
M a police car that had broken