150,000 March in Memory of Stalin Victims

An estimated 150,000 pro-democracy activists demonstrated again here Monday, this time to honor the memory of the victims of Josef Stalin as well as to keep pressing for change in this country.

Organizers of the demonstrations, which have been held each Monday since early fall, announced that they will now take a break until after the holidays in an effort to keep the marches peaceful.

A Dominican monk, one of the original organizers, said: “I’m worried that the marches are getting out of hand. They seem no longer peaceful. I can remember when we thought that 2,000 people turning out was a lot of people.”

Dressed in a long white robe with a brown cowl, Father Berhard Venzke, a chaplain at St. Martin’s Church here, said he is concerned about young men carrying flags in the march that show Germany’s borders as they were in 1937 and chanting “Deutschland, Deutschland!” as they did Monday.

“These people may not be right-wing extremists,” Venzke said, “but they are moving in that direction. We used to worry about the police breaking up the marches--but now it is some of these people who worry us.

“I hope things will cool down before the next Monday march, which will be Jan. 8.”

Venzke and others are apprehensive about reports in East Germany that intolerance and bigotry are on the rise, along with the new freedoms that have come as the longtime grip of the Communist Party on the country eases.

The press has been reporting anti-Semitic acts and meetings of small neo-Nazi groups.

Another one of the original march organizers, Reinhard Goerbing, said: “I think that what some of the new demonstrators are calling for (reunification of Germany) is a shame. They are making everything kaput. “

Concerns voiced here Monday reflect those that are being expressed in other parts of East Germany by leaders who organized demonstrations that brought down the country’s hard-line Communist leadership.

These protest leaders want nonviolent demonstrations to press for economic and political reforms, but in the main they want East Germany to retain its status as an independent socialist state.