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NY 100-56680 | ; = ? : CONFIRRTIAL . I BACKGROUND | | A- Foreign Travel os ae << The New York "Daily News" issue of August 30, 1963, page forty-four set forth comments of a newspaper reporter concerning the flight of PAUL ROBESON and ESLANDA ROBESON - to East Germany in August 1963. The following is- = - --- excerpted from the newspaper article: . ' "Despibe subsequent reports from East Berlin, London newspapermen found the circumstances of his | departure from London to be suspicious. They pointed out that his fiery 65-year-old wife joined with Red Poland's ambassador to England, Der-®6dzinski, to smuggle Robeson from a London hospital for nervous diseases to a {Polis Ilyushin plane that sped him across the Iron Curtain t#n VBVaant BDawntin vw\ SG Ls BLkie “if, as some of us suspect, Paul Robeson never co ' again will emerge from behind the Iron Curtain, this is” a description by veteran British newsman John Osman of - Robeson aboard the Ilyushin plane. 'He sat like an effigy in his seat next to a plane window. In flight, I introduced myself to Mr. Robeson, who smiled charmingly and seemed about to talk to me. Angrily, hie wife, who told me that she Ikmew judo and would happily use it to keep people away from her “completely exhausted # husband, demanded I leave Paul and return to my own seat. Paul ~ ee looked on stolidly, sat silently as his wife gave orders.‘ a Osman had wangled passage aboard the plane. He saw that as ‘ the Robesons were met at East Berlin's Schoenfeld Airport | a - " by uniformed officials and whisked away in a dark car." - - 2e