West Germany: Alt Lang Syne

By bus, automobile and special trains, 250,000 Germans originally from Silesia poured into Cologne last week. Jamming open-air restaurants and Bierstuben, they swapped stories with old friends over Rhenish beer and schnapps beneath banners proclaiming "For Silesia." The occasion was the regular reunion of Germans expelled from Communist Poland after World War II. During a mammoth rally at fairgrounds on the banks of the Rhine, the gemütlich scene suddenly turned into a riot; stirred up by a rabble-rousing politician, the crowd nearly mobbed a German TV reporter who had suggested that Poland is doing well by the...

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