Foreign News: Favor

All over Vienna, posters bearing the pictures of long-missing soldiers plead: “Who knows anything about my husband . . . son . . . father . . . ? Last heard from at the Battle of Stalingrad. . . .” With heavy hearts Austrians wonder about their 100,000 soldiers who are still prisoners of war in Russia.*

Austria’s four Communist deputies (Ernst Fischer, Johann Koplenig, Franz Honner, Viktor Elser) wrote to Moscow to ask whether something could not be done about the prisoners. Last week Generalissimo Stalin graciously replied: “The Soviet Government has decided to speed up the release and transport of Austrian prisoners of war . . . in such a way as to grant the return of all Austrians before the end of the year. . . .” As an afterthought, he added: “The Austrian Government will be informed of [this]. . . .” Vienna’s Communist Volksstimme jubilantly pointed the moral: “Today not only Austrian women but the entire Austrian nation thank Generalissimo Stalin for his aid and understanding.”

*Because no information is available from Russia, estimates of the number of prisoners vary from 10,000 to 200,000.