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Show Salvage Crews Comb Berlin For Treasures BERLIN. They call themselves the "Kings of the Ruins." Theirs is a perilous profession. Its dangers run from collapsing walls to bites from overgrown and ferocious rats. They are the men and boys who make a profession of digging in Berlin's Ber-lin's thousands of bomb-ruined buildings for such treasures &s scrap metal, plumbing and heating fixtures, furniture and wood. This "treasure under the rubble" Is a much greater lure now than the old boyhood business of picking up scrap metal for sale to junkmen for a few pennies. In Germany's battered cities, it's more dangerous, danger-ous, too. Perilous Work. The greatest peril to the salvage gangs is the collapse of walls. Hardly a day passes in Berlin but someone is killed or injured in such an accident. Another ever present danger is the explosion of old bombs or other munitions in the ruins. The salvagers have a system which requires that every working crew always must post a sentry to keep an eye on the weak walls. "We also post a sentry to keep an eye on the rats," one salvager said. "We run across some pretty big ones In the ruins, large and savage ones. Smells of the Dead. "But no sentry could do anything about the terriblo smells. They are the smells of the unburied dead of the bombing war, or dead animals and of stagnant pools." These probers of the ruins need j no maps to find the treasures they seek. "AH one needs to know." said the foreman of one crew, "is the ordinary ordi-nary architecture of an apartment building. What we arc after especially espe-cially for salvage is the plumbing pipes and fixtures. Metal eaves-troughs eaves-troughs also fetch valuable returns." |