The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-12-12


 l thought she had seen a bed hunt enSued-Without results. Several persons carried sandwiches to the shelter. Most of us tried to sleep through the four-hour raid but without much luck.
 The German capital has escaped far more lightly during R. A. F. raids than many cities of western Germany and recently there has been a period in which no bomb- CTS have attacked Berlin. But Der liners have had enough to feel they are in the war zone. Special Cellars for Jews
 Some houses have special cellars for Jews. A woman acquaintance told me one cellar in her house us- ually is crowded while the other is comparatively empty. She said she always sat in the empty one because it was much more cheer ful' until she told an air warden about it.
 But don't you know" the warden 1 said those are Jews"
 People in the streets during an air raid alarm must hustle imme- diately to the nearest public shelter. Mostly the shelters are clean, Sani- tary and strongly built with gas- proof doors, but often they have in- sufficient seating accommoda I was caught once on my way to the of1ce and spent five painful hours sitting on an up turned bucket in shelter.
 Theater and movie performances end abruptly with the sound of the sirens and audiences are herd ed to the nearest cellars. A young soldier friend, on leave recently, went to see Cleopatra the Sec- ond," one of Berlin's biggest hits. The siren sounded a half-hour be- fore the final curtain. The audi ence was given tickets to the next nights performance and went to shelters. But exactly the same thing happened the next night. The fol- lowing day his leave ended, so he never has seen the last half-hour of the show.
 Many Obstinate Despite a year of Nazi disciplin- ing, many Berliners still show sur- ! prising resistance to being herded into cellars and, despite repeated warnings and threats, thousands perhaps as many as 10 per cent of the people-remain upstairs. Since the beginning of the con- fiict, there have been about 40 air alarms in the German capital. Bombs actually were dropped on perhaps 30 occasions, but Berlin shows very few scars for the first three months of aerial warfare. For a time, RAF raiders appear ed over the city four or five times a week, which jolted some of the beer hall oracles who said British flyers never would get this far. Of late, however, the raids have de- creased both in frequency and in- tensity.
 After each raid, authorities rush repairs and today, apart from few battered buildings in scattered parts of the city, it takes lot of intensive looking to find any bomb- scars.
 Berlin, however, has gotten of much more lightly than Hamburg, Bremen and some of the Rhineland cities, which from May to mid- November have had very few nights without the warning vail of the air raid sirens.
 Still Hurry Home But even these winter nights when raids are less frequent, Ber- liners still scuttle home by 8:30 D. m. to avoid the risk of hav- ing to spend four or five uncom- l fortable hours on a wooden bench in public shelter. The final per- formance at Berlin theaters ends about 8:45 p. m.-7 p. m. in Ham, burg, which is a much shorter fly ing distance from England-and blacked-out streets appear almost lifeless by p. m.
 There is no masS-Scale cellar life in Berlin as there is in London and no nightly treks with bedding to subways and public shelters, which here are comparatively small and are intended only for people caught in the streets.
 The average Berliner by now has his air raid routine all worked out. As soon as the sirens blow and he can hear the rumble of anti-aircraft fire from the city's outskirts, he jumps into an old pair of trousers, grabs a couple of cushions, a package of sandwiches and perhaps a detective story, and marches down to the cellar.
 In this city of 4,000, ,000, most shell ters are converted cellars and nearly every Berlin apartment house has one. Most public shelters are we'll built and re-enforced with concrete and steel, but many of the pri- vate cellars are antiquated and far from bombproof. In at least two raids this fall, heavy explosive bombs, dropping obliquely, struck the ground floor of an apartment house and penetrated into the eel lar, killing or injuring all the oc- cupantS.
 Honey Touches
 Most of the apartment house shell ters have been given ''homey touches" They have been fixed up With cast OH SofaS, mattresses and deck chairs to reduce the discom- forts and decorated. naturally, with the fuehrer,s portrait. There is one story being told about a German training plane which recently Strayed over Ber- line causing an alarm. The two youngsters piloting the plane were caught in an anti-aircraft bar rage and bailed out when their ship burst into flames.
 Landing safely in a back garden, the two airmen were making for the nearest police station to re- port, when they were halted by an air raid warden. They attempted to protest and told him they were responsible for the alarm, but he replied. Tt doesn't matter, the rules are nobody is allowed on the street during an alarm"
 N.