German Student Goes on Television Tour

Spring Reading Period is usually spent in Lamont, on the banks of the Charles, or in the recesses of the U.T. This year, however, one College senior for seek all three of these methods and instead went on a four through the Midwest, showing movies of Communist activities in East Germany on educational television.

Otto Bachmann '56, holder of the James Bryant Conant-Class of 1928 Scholarship, went on this tour "to see America, to give something in return for my scholarship, and to do something for Germany." The German Embassy sponsored the trip.

Bachmann gave commentaries on both of his films, one of which is a Communist-produced propaganda movie, the other a piece produced by West German cameramen dealing with the uprising in Berlin in 1953.

"I wanted to tell the American people about the situation that new exists in Germany," Bachmann explained. "We can't achieve reunification alone, so I felt it necessary to keep the situation in the minds of Americans," he said.

Bachmann Sent to Siberia

The Communist-produced film, entitled "Homeland, We Defend You," illustrates the methods the Reds use to indoctrinate East German youth. The other film deals with the 1953 uprising and the refugee problem that faces West Berlin.

Bachmann was born in East Germany and was forced to join the Communist Youth movement in 1949. He became a member of a resistance movement, and in 1950 he was arrested and tried by the Soviet MVD. "The only evidence against me," Bachmann said, "was the distribution of "Readers Digest,' for which I was sentenced to 25 years at hard labor."

After three years in a slave-labor camp in Siberia, he was released when Stalin died. He fled to the West and came to this country on the Conant Scholarship. Bachmannn plans another television tour sometime after exams.