Commemorating 45 Years of Friendship with Edith Ballantyne[1] by Irene Eckert, December 2025
„Genuine security is not about militarism and war but, rather, it is the realization of fair and just societies
where the rights and the wellbeing of everyone are respected and upheld.“ [2]E. B.
Disarmament was once high on the UN agenda in fall 1982 when Edith Ballantyne received standing ovations at the General Assembly in New York. Performing then as president of an NGO alliance by the acronym ‘CONGO’[3] the daughter of an ex- Selesian Union Leader brought global attention to the demands of the UN Decade on Women: „Equality, Development and Peace“[4] To hear a woman talk on disarmament at the highest UN[5] body was quite extraordinary even during alleged ‘Detente’. Brave Edith knew how to use the UN platform well and did the most natural thing. She drew the delegates attention to the UN Charter by quoting :
„All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered[6]“
Peace Is A Human Right[7]
NATO’s re-armament decision of 1979 to plant a new round of decapitating first strike nukes in Europe had miraculously risen global awareness to the possible extinction of the human race. It kicked off an amazingly strong international call for peace and disarmament. Edith, already close to retirement age by then, seized the day and gave the cause for peace as a human right a considerable push forward.
Acting as general secretary of an elderly international women’s NGO known as WILPF [8][9], she would reach out with fresh energy beyond UN boundaries. In her multiple functions she always had a copy of the UN Charter in her pockets. According UN Conventions also served her as guiding star. With all her devotion for peace she also was a realist and knew that peace had to be defended. The value of the United Nations depended completely on its respective member governments and the critical will of its electorate. With this in mind any international diplomat would have to stay in close contact with national governments and grassroutes movements at home. Consequently Edith encouraged peace activists to lobby their nationally elected government and work with their Members of Parliament. UN embassador’s pledges should be made known in their home countries. „Take them by their word and help them stand by it“ Edith explained. She was convinced that strong public support was generally needed to help politicians implement their often hypocritical promises at an international tribune.
With such a straight forward approach Edith was able to blow new life into an almost forgotten women’s peace alliance plus she would become a respectable adviser within the UN diplomacy arena.
In times of hightening tensions she succeded to waken up the sleeping beauty of meaningful women’s disarmament traditions of the inter bellum period.
White Peace Doves Waving Good-Bye To A Beautiful Soul
When Edith finally passed away at the age of 102 in May 2025 friends spotted a couple of two rare white doves settling in on her balcony at the Résidence du Petit Saconnex in Geneva, a retired home, mostly for ex UN-diplopmats. Up to her last breath Edith had lived an independent life in her last home of course with the support of family and friends. We all were touched alike by this most telling white dove metaphor. Everyone agreed, this was Edith sending out her last message.
Having been brought up in a Sudenten German Socialdemocrat family Edith remained a staunch atheist. With Marx’, Engels’ and Lenin’s books on her shelf, she still would have appreciated our interpretation of the white doves’ symbolism. She loved meaningful metaphor and the spirituality of good poetry.
While a captivating whodunit would be her preferred bed time reading, she revered the art of good story telling in general. As so many of her generation she had a leaning towards freedom poet Friedrich Schiller’s beautiful verses. She would read ‘The Bell’ and ‘The Ghostseer’[10] in her native German language. Her love for ballads, folk songs and the music of beautiful imagery was part of her mother’s legacy.
Edith’s maiden name was Müller. This very common German epithet went along well with the modesty and generosity of her simple folks origin. The small and unpretensious ‘lady’ of Sudeten German origin would exemplify to me what Friedrich Schiller might have called a ‘Beautiful Soul’. She was certainly somebody for whom duty and inclination had become one. She would always enjoy what she was doing. Her actions were motivated by human instinct and based on whatever knowledge the self trained woman had been able to acquire during her long life span. Their was not an inch of hypocracy in any of her doings.
Ironically, Edith Müller-Ballantyne bore the same Christian name as my mother. Both were children of the same difficult interwar period. But whereas Edith Müller’s cradle stood on Selesian soil in Czechoslovakia, my mother Edith, Margarete David was delivered as an illegitimate child in nearby German Selesia in 1929. Both girls were refugees when still in their teens, but for reasons far apart. The characters of the two women could not have been more adversary. Edith Ballantyne, formerly Müller and I often talked about our respective mother’s legacy. The grave impact of a loving and caring mother seemed to have been the key element that had shaped her warm hearted character.
Love for the Human Race
Listening to Edith’s childhood stories over the years, I could see her mature against all odds into the integral voice calling out human suffering wherever it might occur.
The healthy climate and naturally grown food of a childhood in the Bohemian woods supplied her with a strong body. A caring and beloved mother who knew how to sort out the fragile and conflict-prone situation at home[11] taught her how to deal with the complex human nature. Her fate as a young refugee, uprooted and forced to survive with complete strangers in the wilderness of the Canadian Hinterland obliged her to get along with everybody. More or less favorite circumstances in exile, like the help of socially minded WILPFers, teaching her English, would improve her dire fate. With her open mind and inborn intelligence she would fast become fluent in the foreign language and even find a job that demanded editing skills. In Cam(pell) Ballantyne, she met a corresponding sole. Falling in love with the fatherly figure of this experienced sports reporter gave her great confidence. The divorced man, already father of a small daughter would become her lifelong companion. After a quick marriage the couple formed a perfect match as they were united in what Bert Brecht would have called the „Praise of the Third Thing.[12]“
In my eyes it was Edith’s and Cam’s Renaissance like trust in the human race and their love for children that forged their bonds. Edith’s strong sense for personal responsibility and justice and her curious mind were the indispensible elements that shaped her character. Together with a strong will this would motivate her never ending struggle for the betterment of the human family.
Last Word: Do not Forget GAZA!
I am glad to have listened to our Mongolian friend Nara Luvsan’s call in April 2025. For almost five crucial years I had not seen Edith.The pause was imposed partly by the pandemic prescriptions and partly by family obligations and poor health conditions. During that period I would call her on a regular basis. She repeatedly encouraged me to come by and see her in Geneva. After all, many friends and all her family did come by even during these difficult years. Children, grand children and family would share in the care for their now rapidly aging mother. Taking turns family members did not spare effort nore expense but travelled regularly from Canada to and fro. Friends frequently would come in and see her, too, even as from far away as Australia. As she had always done, Edith would provide a bed and a meal for her visitors. Until her early nineties Edith had crossed the ocean herself many times. At least for Christmas she would fly to Canada in order to celebrate with the family. She never went without lots of Swiss chocolate for the little ones in her suitcase.
This springtime, when I eventually made it again to Geneva, my dear motherly friend was already half blind. She suffered from a serious skin desease, that later turned out to be a sepsis. Obviously she was exhausted but her extraordinary mind was still functioning. As always she still had definite ideas about the heigthened global crisis situation. Her first and foremost concern remained the genocide imposed on the imprisioned Palestinian People in Gaza and beyond. Our last conversations turned around the role of the US government in this ongoing genocidal massacre and that of US president Donald Trump’s personal implication in this matter. Our views about this awkward political figure might have differed slightly, as we often reflected upon global phenomena from a somewhat different angle. But our friendship was grounded on solid soil, on years of common struggle for human survival and for better international relations. „I am tired now“, she murmered, „but I know what I know. Donald Trump is not a serious person and he is not to be trusted.“ These were her last words in my ear.
Working With Edith
Heads of states changed seats most often for worse as we talked about the need for fundamental change on a global scale, for a New Economic World Order, for a world even beyond capitalism. Edith always underlined the impact that we, the people, had on the future of humanity. „Get the word out, act in a responsible manner, see what you personally can contribute, find allies and organize.“ These were the words I had often heard from her mouth.
She remained faithful to the good old ‘Women’s League’, that she had represented in so many coalitions, in so many ways, for so many years. I had long given up on working with a rejuveniled WILPF that had chosen to follow the new Zeitgeist. In my mind the younger generation had fallen into the trap of genderism, applauding women’s achievements with war hawks like Hillary Clinton and Ursula von der Leyen in driver seat positions. Edith was well aware of such deplorable trends but she believed in the stronger bond of inter personal relationships. She would not sacrifice friendship on the altar of principles. One thing remains sure, Edith’s personality did have an impact on everybody who worked with her. Most definitely she had an impact on me.
My life as a teacher and peace researcher has been turned upside down for good after our paths crossed for the second time at a CONGO-Conference at the Palace of Nations in Geneva in 1981.
Over a period of 45 years I would spend many moments with Edith and with her late husband Cam Ballantyne, the supportive father of their four children of my age. In rare moments Cam, Edith and I would sit and exchange personal stories but more often we were interrupted by more urgent matters.
Somebody calling for Edith’s immediate help, would cut short such ‘idle’ conversations. In her active years she would never let such a call unanswered. If the busy woman was not on the phone she sat at the typewriter and later at her PC. She must have been the first one of my knowing, that had acquired such a progressive, labor saving device. But the work load only seemed to grow. With plenty of incoming e-mails, an urgent debate over some final document, a press release that needed to be drafted, a conference paper to be preapared, a forthcoming event to be organized, Edith often worked late at night. Debates over geopolitical issues took frequently place over the lunch or dinner table.
As so many of Edith co-workers over the years I personally have never received more encouragement and support in serious as well as petty personal matters than while in living and working with Edith. She made things so easy for everyone. Time spent with her was always educative and fun, it was a great priviledge and pleasure.
WILPF For Equality, Development and Peace
In 1980 with the motivation of a peace dove Edith forged together an ‘International Summer School for Young Women’ in Cartigny, Switzerland. Hamburg’s WIL[13] leader Ruth Gleissberg[14], like Edith a surviver of the NS war machine, had invited me to the Cartigny workshop. I am glad that I followed Ruth’s advice at the time.
When I met Edith, she had already been married to ex- ILO[15] diplomat Campell Ballantyne for 35 years. After the Second World War and the defeat of the Nazi regime, together with Cam (pell) she had returned from her Canadian exile to Europe. Together they had raised the children[16] . As they grew up fast, Edith soon helped support the numerous family with a part time job at the WHO[17]. As a one time refugee from Hitler’s expansionist, repressive, supremacist war policy she would always reach out to people in need. After the children had left to attend school in Canada, she saw a new major war, even a nuclear war on the horizon. Like her ‘WILPF elders [18] in 1915 had done, she understood that there was a need to acknowledge the sources of armed conflict as a key to prevent them. In their mind you had to lobby decision makers, sent delegates onto conflict zones and educate your constituency.
With such background Edith never fell completely into the trap of narrow minded feminist supremacy ideals that had led previous generations to the false conclusion of ‘Right or Wrong it is my Country’[19] . Such attitude had trapped the majority faction of the Bourgeois suffragettes into supporting unjustifiable war efforts in the past.
In Edith’s broader vision women had to participate in the struggle for a different kind of leadership. Such a more enlightened leadership would then strive to overcome conditions that forced people to flee their home countries, such a leadership would focus on halting the war machine altogether instead of preparing their nations for war again. If Equality was to be meaningful it had to imply development. Development in its full sense would help broaden people’s thinking, would encourage investment in infrastructure and industry, would consequently raise the standards of living everywhere. Development required peace as a fundamental prerequisite and would vice versa prepare the path to Peace – at home and abroad. With such convictions Edith would not only confront us summer school students of 1980. They would help her rekindle WILPF’s international internship program and make her a wanted speaker around the world.
Escaping Hitler’s War Machine
In Cartigny Edith would introduce us young folks to an elderly, quite exprienced generation of female peaceworkers. Some had struggled against the NS war machine, some had been driven into exile by racist and eugenic laws, others were victims of McCarthy’s witchhunt against „Reds“. Our WILPF friends in California Ruth Hunter and Lucy Haessler called her generation the „Red Diaper Babies“.
Hardly any of them defined themselves as „feminists“ [20] . Edith’s role model were the Canadian Wilpfers who had engaged in socialwork. Edith had once profited from such Canadian WILPF members in Montreal after having escaped from slave labor with the British Pacific Railroad Company. This bunch of women were united by a cause. They strived for a world without colonialism, a society without racism, a planet without war, an environment where humans would live together without fearing the nuclear shadow hanging over them, a family friendly policy which would help ease women’s chores.
Towards A Just Peace In The Middle East
With her inherited compassion for the human race Edith’s eyes would always turn first to the most immediate, the most burning issue. The continuous bleeding wound of the Levante would remain on top of her busy agenda. For Summer School 1980 she had been able to recruit notable late PLO leader Dr. Issam Sartawi[21] together with Israeli ex-general Mattityahu Peled. Both men were recipients of the Austrian Bruno Kreisky Peace Award.[22] Together they would draw our attention to the obligations of the International UN Community. That ever bleeding wound was caused on a dark November day in 1947 with the fatal UN partition plan [23] which enabled the creation of the artifical state of Israel.
With her biographical background as a Czech-German-Canadian-Swiss citizen, as a victim of Hitler’s war machine and of British Imperialism Edith could provide excellent diplomatic skills , especially when it came to the Isreali-Palestine issue. With participants from Israel, Palestine, the Lebanon, Syria, she would frequently serve as a mediator. Massacres like the one of 1982 in Shabra and Shatilla[24] were in the air. I’ve personally listened to uncountable stories about Edith helping ordinary people from both sides of the front coming together and talk quietly and peacefully. Once I called her myself in despair from Ramallah, administrative capital of Palestine. I was profoundly shocked with what I saw with my very eyes. I could hardly bear the stories I heard from the Palestinian family I had stayed with over night. I was even afraid for my own life. Edith’s voice comforted me, you will get out, she said, do not worry for your personal safety..
But of course, she would worry too. She would worry about the tragedy of Palestine, its soft and beautiful people, their various precious traditions, the lives of their children, being sacrificed on the altar of imperialism.
I’ve seen her in sorrow about the slow destruction of a once blossoming Lebanon, the accelerating ruin of erstwhile rich and multicultural Syria, the murder of Lebanon’s, Iraq’s and Libya’s heads of states, the starving of once well fed and well educated populations. „We must make friends on both sides in order to promote peace“ she said, there is no other way to peace. She would bring me in contact with expatriate friends of these nations. I would learn about their rich culture and history.
Edith’s motherly heart would bleed over the nefarious effects of sanctions on the artificially impoverished countries of the Global South. She saw how children and their mothers suffered most from the economic warfare imposed on them. As strong defender of the Human Rights Declaration she was appauled by the blockade policies, always justified with some hypocritical humanitarian pretext. Such inhumane policies, indiscriminatelly imposed upon entire nations had not even been applied against the murderous Hitler regime, nor would it have been justified, as she reminded us.
With many Jewish WILPF members in their rank and file women of Edith’s generation would certainly not forget the plight of the European Jews, but these enlightened women would equally sympathize with the ongoing ‘Nakba’ of the Palestinian people since 1948, after the unilateral creation of the suprimacist state of Israel.
With the still shining example of Regene Silver from Philadelpia, once a summer school participant and a close cooperator with the STAR campaign[25], the US WILPF branch continues to have a strong voice for Palestine.
From War Torn Europe To The Canadian Hinterland
With more than a century on her back Edith was a witness of many human made tragedies since she fled Czechoslovakia after the Munich Diktat in 1938. The wounds of tortured young antifascists fleeing from Hitler’s minions into the Bohemian woods were tatooed onto her flesh. But she also kept the immortal memory of her compassionate mother treating and feeding terribly abused NS victims before helping them on.
In the Bohemian forest sorrounding her home town Jägersdorf/Krnov young Edith had collected mushrooms and blueberries with her grandmother and listened to the old songs of her mother while they were preserving fruit.
With her quick mind she would have liked to finish Grammar School. But when she had to leave the fresh air of the Bohemian woods, she did so without much regret. For the teenager it had been an adventure to camp in gymnasiums, travel to Great Britain only to be shipped to the British Crown Colony Canada. It was therefore without bitterness that she later recalled the quasi slave status they had been kept under while tilling the land for the Canadian Pacific Railroad Settlement. At the beginning the adventure seemed to continue with rifles handed over to them for hunting hares. But with the animals scared away, they would end up eating canned food heated over wild fire. After they had built their own huts using the tools provided by the company, they would even organize dancing sessions on a self constructed wooden platform on Saturday nights, accompanied by their own music.
For Edith her time as a farm labourer and as a maid servant in a Montreal city household these were years of wandering and learning. Gradually she was able to work her way up through odd jobs, polish her language and even become an international influencer.
A WILPF Volunteer Living In With Edith
When I moved in with the couple in 1983 her retired husband Cam had taken over most of the housework. Edith, now full time WILPF’s international secretary, usually left for the office shortly before 9 a.m at times she would return late at night. Cam, waiting with the evening meal ready on the table at times greeting us somewhat grudgingly. Of course he was proud of his wife whose advice was sought widely . By then „ask Edith“ had become a frequent phrase. Living next door with the couple I frequently experienced dinners interrupted by phone calls. And at 5’clock a.m. Edith was usually up again, typing the latest minutes for yet another UN Sub Committee on Women, Racism, the Rights of Indigenous People, Disarmament or another burning issue of the time. In summer 1985 she was busy preparing for ‘The Women’s Peace Tent’ of Nairobi’ at the closing session of the UN Women’s decade.
During my two years as a WILPF volunteer, I would meet people from all corners of the planet going in and out of the little office opposite the League of Nations Palace. Among the many visitors coming by was distinguished Indian peace worker Romesh Chandra[26], then head of the World Peace Council. Like always Edith would introduce me with a casual „Come and meet my colleague“. If UN General Secretary Kurt Waldheim or later Kofi Anan personally had come by she would not have acted differently.
Occasionally Edith invited me or some other ‘colleague’ for lunch at the office cantine. When she was invited to a UN embassies’ or UN committee meeting over lunchtime she would ask me to come by, too. This was a natural gesture for her. As she took me to such special events she might even sometimes cover the attendance fee.
Guests from various nations, races, traditions or backgrounds also found their way to the Ballantyne dinner table at 7, Rue de Sécheron. Their modest rented home on the basement of an old apartment bloc in an industrial quarter was in walking distance between Lac Leman[27] and the office building at 1, Rue de Varembé, facing the ex-League of Nations Headquarters.
After Cam had passed away Edith would share the 7 room apartment with other tenants. But for now, homemaker Cam would prepare the nutritious evening meals, always accompanied by fresh veggies, a salad, a glass of wine and cheese or a desert. Even though we were at times up to eight people at the dinner table, there was no outside help, cleaning up was done collectively, while debates continued. Conversations in those days were often overshadowed by East-West tensions.
For a relaxing pause Edith and ex-journalist Cam would watch a tennis tournement or an ice scating competition. On a rare occasion we went to Carouge to see a French version of Brecht’s „Three Penny Opera“ on stage. On weekend mornings I sometimes went jogging with good old sportsman Cam in the Botanical Garden. I learnt on such an occasion that while the kids were still in the house, the sporty family had kept a rented Challet in the mountains for skiing excursions.
WILPF Saved for Disarmament For A While
In 1982 the United Nations ‘Second Special Session for Disarmament’ (SSDII) would take much of Edith’s energy. As WILPF’s general secretary she had encouraged a considerable segment of the NGO community to unite for disarmament related issues.
Edith felt that it was a special honour for a women’s and peace organisation to preside over a UN-admitted NGO coalition for two terms.
By defending people over profit Edith would confront high stakes as even during the detente period peace had always been a controversial issue. Now and then the prevailing logo went ‘Peace is not good for business’. This was the Global North’ s mindset and such Western values dominated the tune of the music. When in 1970 Edith took over WILPF’s deserted post box in Geneva she would save it as a voice for peaceful cooperation – at least for the moment. With all its credentials and liasons to the UN body the women’s international alliance had become almost irrelevant by then. Gertrud Baer, daughter of a German Jewish bankers family, first generation Wilpfer, had still been around but had become old and fragile, no longer fit for the job. Ms Ballantyne assisted her and gently replaced her, recognizing the potential of the prestigious legacy of the Women’s League as an advocate for disarmament, which would soon become a front runner on the UN agenda.
With two Nobel Peace Prize winners, Jane Addams, a social worker and Emily Green Balch, a professor for Economics the WIL was a gem, especially in the West where peace advocates have always been smeared as Soviet stooges. While the Socialist Bloc forwarded a series of peace proposals the very term ‘peace’ was stigmatized as a Red hoax. Women too closely attached with it would risk their job[28]. The ‘German Angst’ syndrom was another artificially created tool to ridicule so called ‘pacifists’. With an even more vicious slight of hand those who opposed nuclear weapons were made responsible for the Munic Surrender Agreement of 1938. But with Edith all these satanic tools would not stick.
Ironically the existence of the ‘Soviet Bloc’ would also offer a certain space for disarmament talks on a global platform. Delegates of the Socialist countries always went along with NGO’s disarmament proposals, which is explicable by their death toll in WWII [29]
Peace And Human Rights Hand In Hand
While in accordance with the UN Charter the socialist countries pushed the UN agenda towards peace and disarmament, the Western bloc would prefer pointing out to ‘Human Rights’ abuses[30]. As an advocate for peace as well as a human rights lobbyist Edith would not be trapped. Having been born on Dec. 10th her birthday fell on the day of the UN Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. As a victim of human rights abuse she was in a position to brush of any slander. With equal ferver she contributed to the UN Human Rights Commission as to the UN Disarmament Commission and related bodies.
The West has been always good at forging narratives. Rarely if ever did they reflect their own faults or contradictions. One of those ironies could be highlighted by the role that was attributed to detente icon Willy Brandt. The German ex-chancellor, a Socialdemocrat was red trapped and quickly pushed out of office. Soon after the UN commissioned ‘Brundlandt Report’ bore Willy Brandt’s signature[31] . Its conclusions read like Edith’s own mantra:“Development demands peace and we must reach out to your opponent if we want to maintain peace and achieve disarmament.“
Disarmament and peace have remained controversial issues. But even while Edith was still around not everyone within the UN community saw the aggressive nature of the NATO alliance which in its very existence de facto contradicts the spirit of the UN Charter.[32]
But in a dialectical manner NATO’s move of 1979 would serve as a midwife to an anti-nuclear war upheaval. With many women in leadership roles, millions took to the streets. Neighborhood committees sprung up, professional groups issued statements, physicians, philosophers, psychologists, natural scientists organised lecture series at universities, artists, musicians offered their skills for peaceful and cooperative meetings. During those heydays Edith would open the doors of the modest Geneva WILPF office for colourful peace activists. Arriving in caravans they would position themselves in front of the UN Palace. There was little awareness to the limits of the United Nations as a transnational liaison of governments which could not act against the will of its most powerful member states. But nevertheless supportive Edith, open to the peacenic’s demands and impressed by their decisiveness, would help them access the UN premises. The UN cafeteria would provide inexpensive meals, library and bookstore were open to them and ongoing UN side events could be attended. Water was available at the office building.
Cold War and Detente
Edith Ballantyne’s most impressive activities fell within the period between 1975 and 2015. Inspite of growing tensions caused by NATO and its allies this were days of relative stability. Detente seemed to have prevailed over a Cold War.
The UN Women’s Decade was launched in 1975 with a conference in Mexico. Edith’s starlight began to rise with the Conference in Copenhagen in 1980 were women from East and West, North and South met for the Midterm Review. With Edith’s help many provocative moments were defused.
In March 2015 with 93 year old Edith attending, young WILPF celebrated the organisation’s 100th Birthday at the Hague with great pomp. The new generation avoided hot issues. Denouncing the US/EU instigated Maidan Coup in Kiew or the US ignated war against Jemen were not posssible. Edith Ballantyne was present as guest of honour and treated respectfully, but her most needed political advice was no longer sought for as it used to be.
How different the air had been at Amsterdam in 1980. How very different the spirit of uprise against the madness of a nuclear war at the horizon in those days. Women’s associations from across the planet had come together and under the auspices of the Dutch Princess. They called for disarmament. Dorothea Sölle, a well known German feminist theologian was among the noteworthy participants. Under Edith’s wise guidance WILPF’s contribution to such a major cooperative event had been considerable.
On November 21 of 1980 hundreds of thousands of protesters hit the streets of Amsterdam. Soon after millions were marching in London, Bonn and most European capitals against more sophisticated US nukes. Almost instantaneously women’s peace encampments like in Greenham Common sprang up at projected nuclear deposites, women’s peace marches across Western Europe were on the agenda.
Wilpfers participated at the Savannah River Plants Camp in South Carolina, site of plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons. Like a spiders net women’s peace activities would be spun around the globe. Edith and her WILPF „sisters“ often lended a helping hand.
Many impressive peaceful encounters would follow, many female peace activists around the world would see a role model in Edith’s handling things, many precious documents were signed, many travel miles undertaken, many conflictuous debates smoothened, while the absurdity of a carefully balanced MAD[33](ness) preserved peace in the atomic age .
Being able to talk things over with Edith at times a survival tool during dark moments became more and more crucial for me. After the ‘Fall of the Wall’ UN institutions and NGOs have been hijacked widely by war hawks. Opposing disarmament voices became labled as old fashioned. Voices challenging the arms build up faded away.
Whereas the hegemon’s push now for unrestrained re-armament contradicts the needs of the ordinary people, basic human rights as enshrined in multiple UN documents are completely ignored by the profiteers of the unleashed warmachine.
Unfortunatelly only few among the peace activists, males and females alike have seen the full writing on the wall, in time. However it had been visible since Winston Churchill’s inflammatory Fulton Missouri speech of 1946 . In this most remarkable talk the ex-British Premier in a confrontative attitude denounced ‘the sins of peace’ and gave way to an even more lethal round of arms build up, calling out the ever evil Russian. It had been through this gesture of perfidious Albion that the „Iron Curtain“[34] metaphor was framed and geopolitical realities were turned upside down. Never ever did the British Empire or her allies pursue a peace plan. This is why peace activists were hunted. The over a century old objective was to bring the Soviet Union and its heartland Russia down to her knees . After F. D. Roosevelt and his second Henry Wallace were out of the game, Churchill in cohorts with Truman would publicly announce „We killed the wrong pig“.[35] However this pig is a bear and still very powerful.
June 1982 in New York One Million March for Disarmament
One of the most notable highlight of the heydays of the international peace movement took place around the UN SSDII[36] in New York in 1982. On June 12, 1982 the largest protest in US history converged in New York City as an estimated one million marched from Central Park towards the UN to demand a halt to nuclear weapons.
In her dual capacity as international WILPF’s general secretary and president of CONGO Edith received much support from a very active and quite influential US-American WILPF branch. They made sure that women peace activists from Germany attend the UN-NGO pre-GA[37] events. Ruth Gleisberg from Hamburg and myself were among the lucky ones sponsored. Together with Edith we marched side by side with 90 years old WILPF pioneer Scott Mildred Olmsted, with Jewish exiled German Christine Friedlander and her family, with Ruth Silman, Ethel Panken, Ann Florant, Betsy Fehrer and many more of these beautiful old ladies carrying exiting stories of their own in their backpacks. Later in the evening we all joined a still amazing crowd of friendly people for a free open air concert in Central Park.
The doors of the UN building at UN Plaza in New York were wide open during the time. Delegates from around 190 nations were welcomed to express their people’s demands for peaceful cooperation. Organisations like ‘Church Women United’ would offer free office space for our meetings.
Deconstruct The Enemy Image!
Detente and Cold War policies went hand in hand. Contacts between East and West were blocked in many ways. However within the UN premises productive encounters were possible at such occiasions. Edith and the US WILPFers went out of their way to encourage East-West dialogue and help build bridges. In their eye the real enemy was nuclear war. In order to bring this menace down, cooperation not confrontation was needed.
But barriers were set up everywhere. There was the outrageous visa denial to hundreds of HIBAKUSHAS[38] from Japan. Their first hand witness on the devastating effects of the double nuke dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unwanted on US territory. The world represented at the UN-GA should not hear about the longterm radiation results. The pepetrators wanted to hush up the monstrosities that followed their nuking of two Japanese cities, which was ordered by Truman from German soil, ironically during the Potsdam Peace Conference.
Limiting the access visas for Soviet delegates beyond the UN premises was another effort to prevent ordinary people to hear from the horses mouth about the realities of life in Russia and other Soviet republics. People to people contact was not wanted.
Swords into Plowshares[39]
But however hard they tried to spin their narrative. The Soviet ‘s wish for peace was carved in stone. The Biblical metaphor “Swords into Plowshares” reflected the spirit of the day. It could even be watched in a Soviet sculpture representing the Isaia verse from the Old Testament. The statue was a gift from the Soviet people to the UN in 1959, installed opposite the UN building at UN Plaza in New York. But the sculpture was somwhat hidden in a corned place.
Time and again Western trained propaganda experts knew how to forge public opinion. Even the most explicit peace symbol would be turned around and used against the allegedly hypocritical Socialist world. Misguided by Anglosaxon three letter agencies antagonistic forces were encouraged to use the „swords into ploughshares“ mataphore in order to unleash a campaign for unilateral disarmament in the GDR. This Eastern part of Germany owed of course its existence to the Soviet Union who had liberated Gthe entire country from the NAZI Yoke.
Edith had travelled many times between East and West Berlin. Under the protection of the oppositional Protestant Church and with consent of the GDR government she tried to reconciliate peace forces in East and West. Through her mediating job Edith had gained enough insight to forsee the explosive situation in the GDR years before the Wall came down.
Edith’s stories would give me a push to dig deeper into the tool box of enemy image building, an indispensable tool for war propaganda.
Gradually I began to understand that war hawks, represented only interests of big business and were therefore in constant need of an artificially created enemy. They spent incredible amounts of resources on building and polishing such enemy images.
When in 1982 Edith Ballantyne would get me my first speaking engagements as a peace activist in a Bethlehem Church in Pennsylvania, I was a complete greenhorn. Excited about the chance to express European opposition to first strike nuke deployment I tried to keep the psy warfare aspect in mind. One day later Edith proposed me for the keynote report at the closing session of the Women’s Conference preluding the UN SSDII.
The STAR Campaign
It was in this global atmosphere that only a couple of weeks later WILPF launched the STAR Campaign[40]. With Edith as general secretary and Caroll Pendel as international president the initiative to kick an ass into arms race was started at Elsinore, Denmark, home ‘Prince Hamlet’. But the originators were a great bunch of US American Wilpfers with Kay Camp, Regine Silver[41], Ann Ivey, Ruth Sillman, Yvonne Logan, Scott Mildred Olmstedt. Kay Camp had come up with the telling acronym, that translated into the unified demand „Stop All Armament“. Very actively involved were also our Dutch friends Carlota Lopez da Silva Lopes and Adrienne van Melle and Dorothea von Randenburgh and her daughter Susanne in Germany.
With the STOP ALL ARMAMENT slogan we had pledged to collect a million signatures and bring 10 000 women to the NATO headquarter embassies at Brussel’s on forthcoming International Women’s Day in 1983. As a ‘STAR coordinator’ was needed in Brussels I prolonged my sabbatical from my teaching obligation, sub-rented my apartment in Berlin-Wedding and moved first to Geneva and soon on to Brussels. Edith first taught me some basic office skills. With Janet Bruin, editor of ‘Pax et Libertas’ we stuffed hundreds of envelopes, glued stamps on and posted them. On three days a week we shared the tiny office space with part time CONGO secretary Lee Weingarten.
When Edith and I arrived in Brussels on Epiphany in January 1983 the weather was dark and grey. Edith Balantyne would once again serve as a door opener. I found shelter with a Quaker woman who worked with the EU.
Together with Fanny Fuchs and Lily Boyken from the national Belgium Women’s Council, with support of local union women, artists, financial support from the Greenham Common Campers and many peace minded individuals we raised enough money to set up a small office under the roof of the headquarters of the Belgium Women’s Assiciations.
On March 1983 10 000 women from all continents would hit the streets of Brussels demanding an end to the nuclear madness and to stop the deployment of Pershing and Cruise Miles on european soil. International Women delegations would visit all the NATO member embassies. In order to keep the fragile balance of alliances, we also sent delegates to each Warsaw Pact embassy.
The STAR-campaign organizing effort was seen as a huge success for those in WILPF who supported Edith’s approach on disarmament as a women’s issue.
But the event had almost overstressed WILPF’s limited ressources. Within short time we had to clear the office space at the Belgium Women’s house.
Given the huge media coverage many felt that the event was historic and should be documented. At the Geneva office Edith, Janet and I were busy evaluating the STAR days. With neither internet nore computer available at that time the task seemed too difficult. Janet Bruin would come over from Zurich to copy and paste all our collected newspaper clippings by hand and eventually she edited a small printed brochure.
World Assembly for Peace and Life and Against Nuclear War in Prague
Edith was already off for another great event. A major forthcoming Peace Assembly in Prague that summer called for her assistance. As Edith a Czech citizen with great international credentials the Czechoslovakian organizers asked her to send a WILPF person over to help with the preperations. Our dear friend Pamela Saffer, a textile artist from New Haven, Connecticut was brave enough to go, ignoring the Red labelling that was to be expected. Pamela had also lent her hand before at the office in Brussles.
The ‘World Assembly for Peace and Life and Against Nuclear War’ of June 1983 would become a meeting place for 2,500 delegates from 132 countries for four days. Edith was treated as a guest of honour. But all delegates would rejoice a reception at the Hradschin Castle where state receptions were held. While celebrating peace, attending artistical and musical presentations of the country’s finest choice, the participants of the ‘Assembly’ guests had also forwarded a final declaration warning that ‘humanity was at a crucial crossroads of history’. Romesh Chandra from the World Peace Council called for concerted worldwide action by the peoples to reverse the tide of the arms build-up.[42]
Always in support of the peoples’ call for peace the Czechoslovakian government spontaneously prolonged our visas and gave us easy access to explore their beautiful country, that was once Edith Ballantyne’s home. After one or two wonderful excursions in a state car with Edith, she would be among the first ones to rush back to duty. All work was not done.
German Bundestag Decision on Pershing II and Cruise Missiles
A German Bundestag decision on the deployment of US first strike nukes on German soil was forthcoming in December the same year. Peace workers saw the need to go beyond lobbying the German Parliament and talk MPS out of consenting to such foreseeable madness. We understood well, that the lethal decision had been forced upon Germany from the other side of the Atlantic. Consequently it seemed adequate to seek support with a receptive US public. Our transatlantic WILPF branch had already taken great efforts to pressure their congressmen[43]. This fall even German ex-chancellor Willy Brandt would personally address senators at the White House in an urgent appeal to stop this further step towards nuclear extinction.
In this historic atmosphere Edith encouraged me to accept an invitation from the US WILPF branch. A three months speaking tour from September to December 1983, organized by Ann Ivey from the Philadelphia WILPF branch took me across the North American continent. Mostly travelling by Greyhound bus, sometimes by plane we[44] took the message from the Prague Peace Assembly to school assemblies, university classes, libraries, church communities and finally to a huge peace march in Los Angeles at the Eve of the Bundestag Decision.
With the help of the Philadelphia WILPF office, WILPF branches across the continent and with the support of multiple peace minded associations we took the European voices of women, daughters, sisters, mothers, wives and men to sometimes huge audiences. Various supportive slogans like „Feed the Cities not Pentagon“, „War is not Healthy for Children and Other living Things“, „Human Race not Arms“ accompanied our journey.
Carol Pendell from Los Angeles, then WILPF’s international president and a close friend Edith’ s wanted dearly to get along with the „Russians“. Both had travelled to Moscow several times. Carol, representing the methodist community, even met with the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church. Edith and Carol both believed in the Russian’s strive for peace as deeply expressed by Yevgeny Yevtushenkovs verses „Do the Russians Want War?“[45]
“Listen To Women For A Change”
With the West German Bundestag decision, caving in to US demands on first strike nukes deployment[46] pointing to Moscow, the Philadelphian WILPF office decided to skip the STAR campaign. Not appropriately evaluated, it had already lost momentum. For the forthcoming US election campaign of 1984 the catchy STAR slogan was replaced by the more ambiguous slogan “Listen To Women For A Change”. Edith saw with concern that the new feminist starlet would soon give way to a different era in which neither disarmament nor peace was related anymore to the potential of the „Women’s Budget“ project. The WB could have provided a strong instrument for demanding disarmament . In order to feed the cities and meet women’s needs you would have to redivert money from the Pentagon to social concerns. But addressing military budgets was not good for (women’s) carriers. The urgent need for halting the nuke’s build up lost attraction with young carrier oriented women, especially after the Reagan-Gorbachev deal[47] of 1986 that implied withdrawing the ‘Euromissiles’.
Edith Ballantyne tried hard to cooperate with ‘feminist’ ideas without neglecting the real deal that remained on the table.The struggle against an ever growing nuclear arms build up that would confront the entire human species with distinction. But with a new generation of feminists on the rise, women’s needs would be interpreted in gender terms. The nuclear threat got out of sight.
After The Fall Of The Wall
Perestroika in Soviet Russia and the fall of the Berlin Wall soon gave way to more illusions over a possible peace achievable without struggle. Edith, however, with her Kassandra clear vision and her childhood family fighting fascism and war, knew what confronting the most profitable military industrial complex meant. She believed that without overcoming capitalist greed there would be no human progress. The Warsaw Pact gone with NATO expanding even beyond treaty territory did not take her by surprise. She had seen the writing on the wall and she had warned against.
Formerly influential voices like the World Peace Council (WPC) faided away, the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) went up in smoke. Both alliances had been partners with whom Edith often shared efforts. Now she was a solitary. It became more and more obvious what it meant to be an honest peace worker in the West. No young professional who had seen Edith’s job description would neither work for as little money nor fulfill the same work load. As many of the earlier ‘peacemaker’ generation she was supported by a well positioned husband. Whereas the above mentioned mass organisations, mostly within the socialist hemisphere were stuffed with duly paid professionals. They could count a considerable membership and enjoyed the support of friendly governments. In our part of the world it worked the other way around. Peace work was voluntary work and non-profit organisations did not pay well. You could not feed a family by enthusiasm .
Under such conditions it was almost natural that the global peace movement would fade away. Even a solid rock,like Edith Ballantyne could not hold out alone against the belligerent Zeitgeist. Under her eyes the UN premises were gradually turned into a fortress. Young dynamic women took over a modernized WILPF office. The old files had to go. They were sent to Bolder, Colorado or to Swarthmore Peace College or they ended up in the waste paper basket. With WILPF now a prestigeous NGO it became attractive for young professionals.
In the meantime Edith had warned against the treacherous UN Resolution R2P[48] passed under Kofi Annan as UN General Secretary. Another pseudo humanitarian pretext was provided calling for more military interventions in sovereign countries. „Responsibility To Protect“ was nothing but a tool to undermine the fundamental framework of the UN Charter .
With ‘Human Rights’ now replacing WILPF’s traditional priority ‘Disarmament’, Edith’s follower in office Babsie Lochbiehler[49] from Munic,Germany would soon be promoted to the European head of Amnesty International.
Human Advancement Achievable Through Struggle Only
In 1986 Edith and Cam would meet my then Turkish husband and our new born daughter Yasemin. At that time we were on our way back home from South-West France where I had taught German as foreign language at the Faculty in Pau. I would make it a habit to visit the befriended couple, always in need of Edith’s motherly advice.
With Edith long over retirement age and Cam getting more and more fragile, Edith would still hold important posts and travel the world while organising intensive care for her chronically ill spouse. Only many years later, when I had taken on the care for a unwell elderly husband myself, I understood that once again she had served as a role model .
After Cam’s eventual passing away, after a long period on and off hospital care Edith would share the expensive seven room apartment in lately gentrified Rue de Sécheron with young interns or promising UN diplomats. Among them were friends like GDR trained Mongolian economist Nara Luvan or later successful business men Ali and family from Xinjiang and other interesting company.
In her mid eighties Edith decided together with her friend Jeane Wickers to move to the retirement home at Colladon. Even their she would continue to host friends or family in her two room apartement. Her biographers, Regina Birchem from the US and Felicity Ruby from Australia would take turns interviewing her on tape and video in order to preserve her legacy.
For me sharing Edith’s company had become even more precious after the Wall had come down. She remained one of the rare persons with whom I could share my analysis of the root causes of the tragic downfall. We agreed that the implosion of the Soviet Union caused great harm to its former citizens but also lead to a series of never ending NATO inflicted wars. The allied bombing of Iraq in 1993 was soon overshadowed by the illegal NATO attacks on Yugoslavia in 1999.
In April that same year, I started to question the dark legend about the Stalin period and began to dug deeper into the root causes for the catastrophic breakdown of socialist world. Edith as everybody else at first shook her head. But she would nevertheless listen and help me to get hold of Grover Furr’s enlightening books on the subject.
During the darkest of darkness when the Corona protocols overshadowed all our lives, Edith would also attentively listen to the voice of young Canadian historian Matthew Ehret and over the phone we would discuss his sometimes provocative findings.
Through Edith I was drawn to Swiss journalist Guy Mettan’s articles and his precious book „Russie – Occident, une Guerre de Mille Ans: La Russophobie de Charlemagne à la Crise Ukrainienne“, Geneve 2015[50]
We both shared confidence in the breath of hope forthcoming with the BRICS alliance of the Global South. As a staunch believer in the UN framework Edith kept pointing out to the UN Charter as the most important international document, obliging all adhering nations to peace and diplomacy. At the same time Edith would insist insisted that the decisive battles needed to be fought on a national level, where democratic constitutions would offer possibilities for the respective peoples to shape their future. Only lately she would become more concerned over the course of history that seemd to repeat itself over and over again. People do not live long enough she said, in order to see ripen what they have been sowing.
But history needs to be studied. It can teach us many relevant lessons. Our elders’ stories need to be tapped. We only have to ask the right questions in order to discover their fascinating and illumniating world. Edith’s legacy reflects an important part of the people’s struggles of the 20th century. It needs to be kept alive against the present amnesia. There is so much more to discover in Edith’s story than I could tell with such a brief overview of course from a Global North perspective. I left out her ardent struggle against racism, her close cooperation with South Africa in the Durban process.I left out her committment to the cause of the Indigenous Peoples and much more.
With one hundred and two years on her shoulders and almost blind, this woman kept a vision and she hoped for human survival. She kept defending her ideas of future global cooperation and peaceful settlement of conflict, while her anxieties about the possible extinction of the human race grew.
But with having seen so many changes, some for good, some for evil she never stopped believing in the great potential of the human race. She remained convinced that change was possible if only there was a joint will. Change had to come with us, the people. She was convinced that we must be the change that we want to see.
________________________________
[1] Sudeten German Edith Ballantyne born Müller *Dec. 10th 1922- May 25th 2025
[2] https://www.against-inhumanity.org/2021/03/06/womens-day-interview-with-edith-ballantyne/
[3]CONGO = Congress of Non-Governmental Organisations, acronym for the informal alliance of international organisms accredited with the UN, devoted to disarmament issues
[4]The dove logo with E in her tail feather and the women’s symbol as her underbelly was used internationally, while on a regional scale, the dutch had come forward with the old lady kicking away the bomb that would become a widespread logo of the European anti new nuke movement of the 1980s
[5]The GA is the main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ of the UN. All 193 Member States of the UN are represented in the General Assembly, making it the only UN body with universal representation.
[6]https://legal.un.org/repertory/art2.shtml
[7]https://cil.nus.edu.sg/blogs/the-right-to-peace-from-proclamation-to-human-right/
[8] Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, a UN related NGO, founded in 1915 in The Hague. Not to be confused with the International Democratic Federation of Women (IDFW) which was an umbrella organism for national women’s alliances
[9]
[10]With ‘The Ghostseer“ as a crime story of the highest quality, with all methods of Psyops being denounced, unveiling geopolitical game playing, the sequel had to remain an unfinished story. By the F. Schiller’s undue, early death contains a mystery story of its own.
[11]With her father, a reknown union leader, a WWI veteran spending a great portion of his weekly cheque on alcohol …
[12]„Praise of the Third Thing“ Ballad by Bert Brecht, from the play „The Mother“
[13] The WIL/WILPF = The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom represented the women’s war resisters faction of the suffragettes, they had set up office during two major twentieth century wars had committed themselves to study the root causes of war and educate women as a precondition for avoiding new human slaughtering. When World War I broke out, this first generation of female academics representing a faction of the bourgeois women’s suffragette movement gained momentum during the interwar period of the ‘Golden Twenties’. Young women were their preferred constituency for reconciling enemy nations and promote diplomacy. But soon the rise of facism and another devastating global war would spoil all their efforts. As all democratic organisations, WILPF branches in Germany were banned under NS law and members sought refuge abroad in order to avoid concentration camp or worse.
In Cartigny WILPF survivors of Hitler’s supremacist fantasies, mostly US citizens would meet with us youngsters. Edith Ballantyne, charing the whole thing would then introduce me to a socially committed bunch of women from all continents, representing various horizons and social backgrounds, but all deeply concerned about the new round of arms build up. Disarmament or annihilation was the activating slogan of the day. On that mission Edith would soon help me to tour the world. On that mission I would meet many more beautiful women and men from the ‘Other America’, the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-supremacist States of America. Their brave stories would carry me on in space and time.
[14] The Zeitgeist had inspired me to look into the history of women’s peace efforts, when I ran into WILPF member Ruth Gleisberg from Hamburg. The eugenic NS war machine had stigmatised the young educator as a „half Jew“ and driven her into Swedish exile. Ruth was an old Wilpfer, heading the active Hamburg branch. Ruth, a Jewish surviver of the NS regime, had been married to Gerhard Gleißberg, founder and editor of the progressive „Andere Zeitung“ (The Other Newspaper). Die Andere Zeitung (AZ) war eine linkssozialistische Wochenzeitung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, die von 1955 bis 1969 in Hamburg erschien. Die Auflage lag zwischen 18.000 und 80.000 verkauften Exemplaren.Chefredakteure waren Gerhard Gleißberg und Rudolf Gottschalk, zwei ehemalige leitende Redakteure des sozialdemokratischen Vorwärts. Darum wurde die AZ auch als „Gegenorgan zum Vorwärts“ bezeichnet. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Andere_Zeitung G. Gleißberg begründete die DFU, Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft
[15]1948 Campell Balantyne had been transferred to Geneva as a journalist with the ILO. At that time the International Labor Office, a UN branch, offered fertile space for peace and justice issues. Open debate was considered normal in those years.
[16]Linda, Morna, Derick and Eiden
[17]In those days the World Health Organisation had not yet been hijacked by the ‘globalist elites’ and like the ILO had a much better reputation
[18]Jane Addams, Aletta Jacobs, Anita Augspurg, Lida Gustava Heymann, Gertrud Baer
[19] Mark Twain once made extraordinary observations about loyalty, unthinking patriotism and imperialistic nationalism in his provocative essay Glances at History, in which he called the phrase My Country, Right orWrong “an insult to the nation.”
[20] The first generation of WILPF women were traditional feminists, dating back to the 19th century. From middle class or even affluent families they all had to overcome barriers once if they wanted to enter the academic and professional world. Among the early Wilpfers were the first female doctors4, lawyers5, scientists and social workers6 . But given their privileged background they still struggled for a worthy social cause, reaching out beyond their class, their kitchen horizon and their national boundaries. In the Zürich constitution WILPF had promised to study the root causes of war in order to help overcome this eternal scourge of humankind. During the interwar period their workshop-series attracted scientists and writers of Albert Einstein’s and Romain Rolland’s prestige. Their shared idea was to recruit young peace oriented women for leadership positions. For Edith this approach seemed obvious.
[21] Only three years later we learnt that cardiologist Sartawi was assassinated, another chapter the of a much larger tragedy
[22] The Western World would continue to frame the ongoing war against the Palestinian People as the ‘Middle East Conflict’.
[23] On November 29, 1947, the world witnessed a pivotal moment in Middle Eastern history when the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, forever known as the Palestine Partition Plan. This landmark decision would set in motion a chain of events that continues to shape geopolitical dynamics in the region for nearly eight decadester.https://www.defensemagazine.com/article/november-29-1947-the-day-that-reshaped-the-middle-east-un-resolution-181-and-the-palestine-partition-plan
[24] The Sabra and Shatila massacre was the 16–18 September 1982 killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—in the city of Beirut…In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon with the intention of rooting out the Palestine Liberation Organization wikipedia
[25] Stop The Arms Race / Regine (Genie ) Silver was a very active contribiuter see for more details see below footnote 37, 39, 40
[26]„Romesh Chandra, one of the greatest peace makers the world has ever seen, as an important figure for us to know and study today. Romesh was an Indian communist who participated in the national struggle for freedom and was at the forefront of the Indian Peace movement. He was one of the most important leaders and theorists of the World Peace Council, serving as its General Secretary from 1966, and as President from 1977. Before Romesh, the world peace movement was primarily a European affair, limited to governmental organizations and intellectuals. Romesh’s great contribution was that he broadened the peace movement by taking it to the masses, and fortified it by adding to it an analysis of imperialism. He believed that peace is everybody’s business…“ https://avantjournal.com/2021/11/17/defending-and-building-positive-peace-the-legacy-of-romesh-chandra/
[27] Geneva Lake
[28]Which seemed to have been the case of professor Eleonore Romberg from the Munic WILPF branch, who would later serve as international WILPF president for one term and eventually help groom Babsie Lochbiehler as her Parliamentary Aid as a Green Member of the Bavarian Länder Parliament. After Edith withdraw Babsie would follow her as general secretary, before she stepped up the carrier ladder towars Amnesty International. The liberal Brandt era policies (Willy Brandt’s input was applauded within the UN community) included „Berufsverbot“, that prevented access to public office for dissenters
[29] The approximately 27 million dead Soviet victims of the Second World War are a little more known than the over 30 million dead Chinese people for whom the war started with the Japanese invasion of 1936.
[30]Most of the victims they would defend, lived in in the Eastern hemisphere
[31] The Brandt Report is the first report of the Independent Commission on International Developmental Issues, chaired by Willy Brandt, published in 1980. The Independent Commission on International Developmental Issues was established in 1977 with the aim to review international development issues, with the former German Chancellor being selected as Head by Robert McNamara, then the World Bank President. The result of the 1980 report, followed by a second one in 1983, provided an understanding of drastic differences in the economic development of the Global North and Global South wikipedia In fall 1983 I listened to a speech that ex-chancelor Brandt delivered to an Assembly in the US White House, where he warned against deploying more nukes on German soil. I was there with a small US-WILPF delegation lobbying on the same subject.
[32] UN article 52 had opended the pathway for such a Troyan Horse contradicting the UN Charter aims and principles https://legal.un.org/repertory/art52.shtml
[33]MAD = Mutually Assured Destruction, safeguarding a balance between the two major nuclear powers preventing an escalation toward de facto destruction
[34] A term coined by Winston Churchill in Fulton Missouri speech of 1946 https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/the-sinews-of-peace/
[35]Of course meaning Hitler instead of Stalin. But it would not take long before the later would be gone, too and replaced by Chrutschtschow and his gang. Among the many geopolitical topics Edith and I would debate over the years was the question of the intriguing implosion of the Soviet Union and its causes. I saw on major factor in the subversive Trotzkite forces that were supported by the Brits from the get go and many had survived the purges of the 1930s. Even though Edith and myself would often differ on that matter, she would help me to get hold of a series of book from US historian Grover Furr on Trotzkis and Chruschtschows and their likes longterm devastating impact on Soviet policies. As she would later help me with Guy Mettans book „ Une Guerre de Milles Ans“ that helps to understand how Western policies have aimed at Russia far beyond their Soviet period..
[36] SSDII Second UN Special Session for Dosarmament
[37]UN General Assembly
[38] Hibakusha a word of Japanese origin generally designating the people affected by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the end of World War II. Janet Bruin,editor of WILPF’s international newsletter, wrote a booklet on the Hibakushas. Janet was another one of those beautiful US American Jews who represented the best traditions of ‘Another America’ . She had lived in Japan for a while. Her encounters with the Hibakushas had motivated her lifelong committment against the nuclear bomb. The healer and physiotherapist had eventually moved from Zurich to Geneva, to be closer to Edith and the office, where she died of cancer at an early age.
Regine Silver remembers:I’m 76! We started very young – I was 23 when I joined WILPF in 1973. I saved up money so that in 1977 I was able to go to Japan with WILPF. I didn’t know anyone! I was a member of the Baltimore Branch; when we moved here, I joined the Mid-City Philadelphia Branch, but no one from those branches went on the trip. It was on that trip I met Kay (she was international president), Edith (secretary-general), Mildred, Libby Frank (chair, Middle East Committee) and Janet, who was living in Japan and writing a book about the Hibakusha. We 1st went to Hiroshima, for daytime and nighttime memorials on August 6. We went to the Red Cross Hospital to bring flowers to and visit with patients whose cancer was caused by the A-Bomb radiation; we met with women Hibakusha. We visited Kyoto and Nara and attended in the Triennial Congress, held in Tokyo.
[39] „Let Us Beat Swords Into Ploughshares“ is a bronze sculpture by artist Evgeniy Vuchetich (1908 ¬– 1974). Vuchetich was an esteemed Soviet sculptor and artist well-known for his heroic monuments. In 1959, he was given the “People’s Artist of the USSR” award. The sculpture depicts the figure of a man, holding a hammer aloft in one hand and a sword in the other hand, hammering the sword into a ploughshare, a tool to till land for crops. This action symbolizes man’s desire to put an end to war and transform tools of destruction into tools to benefit mankind.The Book of Isaiah contains the following passage: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”The sculpture was gifted to the United Nations by the USSR on December 4th, 1959. It was presented on behalf of the Soviet Delegation by Vassily V. Kuznetsov, First Deputy Foreign Minister of the USSR, to Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold who accepted the sculpture on behalf of the United Nations.
[40] The STAR acronym translated in many languages as STOP THE ARMS RACE!/Stoppt Alle Rüstung! Stoppez Tous les Armaments!
[41]My good old friend, then slim and still sharp Dr. Regine (Genie)Silver from Philadelphia was among the youngest in the team with Anne Ley, a German woman from Hamburg, Ann Ivey and myself. We enjoyed every inch of the work load that the job implied and seem to be theonly surving participants now. After having read the draft of my manuscript Genie helped me out with details of her memory which I include here:„Regarding the STAR campaign, the genesis for that endeavor was Kay Camp, she came up with the idea and the great acronym of STAR so, as you point out, Stop The Arms Race could be translated into many languages. I was a member of the STAR Committee, which was chaired by Anne Ivey of the US Section of WILPF. Kay, of course, was a member too, as was Yvonne Logan, president of the US Section. Mildred Scott Olmsted who, though retired as the longest serving executive director of the US Section, participated in the workings of and ideas for the STAR committee. WILPF US had a terrific staff of very smart young women and their participation in the committee was invaluable.I was the chair of WILPF US’ Eurostrategic Committee which was tasked with stopping the deployment of US cruise and Pershing 2 missiles scheduled to be deployed, as you know, in NATO countries in Europe. We personally lobbied every member of Congress to explain why these missiles should never be deployed. I testified before the US Congress Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations, laying out why these missiles should never be deployed in Europe. We developed leaflets with actions to take and made sure all the US Section branches had access to these. Like you, but only on the east coast, I reported to WILPF branches on my peacekeeping trip to London, Düsseldorf, East Berlin and Amsterdam (where Carlotta and the Netherlands Section put on a three day conference re: stopping the deployment of US/NATO missiles targeted on the USSR). I’m glad you mentioned Ruth Sillman, she knew so much and was a great mentor, as were Edith, Kay and Mildred. I have a photo of you, me, Ruth and another young woman from the FRG (long brown hair and tall) when we attended the Executive Committee meeting in Elsinore. It’s framed and on my bedroom dresser as is a photo of Janet Bruin and Ruth from our time in Elsinore, where we planned the 1983 March 8 march. You did an amazing job organizing the march, press conference etc., etc.Congratulations on your splendid portrait of Edith and how she was a great mentor, comrade and friend to you. I loved how you interwove the work and your friendship with Edith. We were incredibly lucky to work with and learn from these great WILPF women. Have fun with your grandchildren during the holidays. I send you best wishes for the New Year. I wish so much there was a way in the coming year to end Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
[42] The war danger, said Mr. Chandra, is greater today than at any time before. The unparalleled armaments build-up and the stockpiling of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction threaten the annihilation of all humanity a fact which calls for concerted worldwide action by the peoples to reverse the tide. https://leninists.org/images/9/9f/PC_1982_6.pdf
[43]See Regine Silver’s personal account under footnote 41
[44]The We were there various Wilpf branches asssited by all kinds of peace minded associations and devoted individuals, some of them had been delegates to the Brussels STAR days, others had been delegates to the Prague Peace Assembly.
[45]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_the_Russians_Want_War%3F very supportive friends against redbaiting were in LA were Lois Hamer (ex member of the Peace Brigade) and in Santa Cruz Ruth Hunter and Lucy Haessler
[46] Back in the 1980s, the deployment of US Pershing ballistic missiles in West Germany, which was then on the front line of the Cold War, prompted widespread pacifist demonstrations. Even after German reunification, US missiles remained stationed in Germany into the 1990s before being slowly removed.https://www.dw.com/en/germany-split-on-us-stationing-long-range-cruise-missiles/a-69638145
[47]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty
[48] With the R2P = „Responsibility to Protect“ approach according to Edith, the UN under Kofi Annan undermined their basic founding principle which was the „souvereignty“ of nations and non-interference into internal affairs. The R2P resolution would serve as pretext for many coloured revolutions, in other words regime change operations and armed interventions.
[49]Babsie had been an Aid to ex-Wilpf president, Eleonore Romberg, Green Member of the Bavarian Parliament
• [50] Guy Mettan, journaliste, dirige le Club suisse de la presse. Ancien directeur-rédacteur en chef de la Tribune de Genève, il exerce des fonctions politiques comme député et ancien président du Grand Conseil de Genève. Il a écrit plusieurs ouvrages sur la Suisse et la Genève internationale. ISBN-13 : 978-2940523184