When you see this woman Else - Wilhelmine A. and hear her moving story you don't laugh.

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When Else - Wilhelmine had to face the court re- cently on charges of pretence and the use of a false name, the prosecutor and judge didn't laugh either. Both recognized the human side of this case. The need, the misery and the fear, which haunted these two women for years.

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Only early this year the two of them fled to the West from the (Soviet) Zone. Else Wilhelmine had relatives here. "Over there we couldn't live any lon- ger. I have worked at hard men's jobs in the zone. All this to secure our livelihood. Now we are here."

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They are here. They don't live together anymore. They see each other only now and then. The matrimony- which they started in Torgau, was against the law and against the normal sensation. They realize it. Do they have to be ashamed? 'Anyone who went through, what we went through, may think about it a little different- ly", figures Else- Wilhelmine. This may be. Else Wil- helmine works again...in a factory near Krefeld...a man's job at the machines.

The case is closed. But the memories are not forgotten, and life goes on.

EDITOR'S NOTE

The foregoing was translated and reprinted from the German newspaper NEUE WELT am Sonnabend printed in Dusseldorf, West Germany. It is seldom that we come across a story about a female transvestite though the pages of this magazine are open to both. It is the Editor's hope that if any of our readers are ac- quainted with a genuine female TV--not just a butch type Lesbian--that they would put her in touch with TVia or vice versa as we would like to look into this field further. Interesting clippings appearing in local papers could be followed up and contacts made.

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