THE CHINA MAIL, FEBRUARY 29, 1940.
EXPEDITION INTO GERMANY-NO. 4
The Uncensored Truth
47
You Would Be Cold In No-Coal Berlin
-A SHIVERING CITY
OF SHUTTERED SHOPS
(By A NEUTRAL OBSERVER)
A SHARP EAST WIND cut across Berlin's Potsdamer- platz and whirled up eddies of icy powdered snow in my face so that it hurt.
The policeman in the green-black traffic signal tower
rivers are over. And this has made it
slapped himself and stamped to keep warm. The fat old, canals and
newspaper women hide in the doorway away from the cold. Impossible for barges to bring sup
plies." -A yellow tramcar clanked across the rails, its windows
covered in ice.
And that was the only traffic, pedestrian or vehicular, to be seen in the famous square that noon. Before the war it was one of the busiest cross-roads in Europe.
Talk about Strength through Joy. This was so bleak it was sheer perni- cious anaemia. There was none of the usual flags flying. The shop windows, such as were not shuttered, were drab and depressing.
Page
ANOTHER.
ARTICLE
In this series by the dis». tinguished neutral ob- server sent on a special Expedition _Into | Ger- mány a month ago, will appear in the “China Mail!!
ON MONDAY
Ing through a very bad time indeed. In another town, I visited the wife and small son of a Jew. who is now in London, His wife is non-Jewish and he had asked me to give her a message, telling her that if any pres- sure were put on her to divorce him she was to do so, without hesitation, for sake of the child;
I have good news for my Jewish friend. So far his wife has not been submitted to any kind of discrimina“ tion. Nothing has been said about compulsory divorce.
Their son, who used
to go
to a Roman Catholic school, has been sent to a State school, as the Roman Catholic school, like all others of Its kind, has been closed.
Only once was the wife questioned. That was by an ARP. warden, who had discovered a crack of light coming from one of her windows and suggest- ed that she was trying to signal British raiders./
to release them against a substantial not gone on the dole. With ransom. characteristic Nazi administrative The general anti-Jewish drive seem- thoroughness they have beened to have died down in its more turned over to other jobs, less ferocious manifestations. That, at any congenial, but where they are use- rate, was the impression of my
She gave him as good as he deser- fully employed in helping Ger- friends.
Eved, and never had any more trouble. many's war effort.
no discrimination She was even receiving parcels of food Many of them are going to be put
against them in the shops, they said, and clothing from relatives abroad. on the land to help farmers grow
and they were given the same No one made an attempt to deprive more food.
amount of ration coupons as Ger- her of them.
There was
་
Farmers who have not enough mans of full Aryan privilege.
When I was in Berlin, the greatest Hefter, the butcher's and delicates- labourers at their disposal have They thought that this was possibly worry of the moment was the absence sen shop, which used to have a most been specially asked .to send in because the Nazis now had their of coal for heating. This, combined cheerful display of succulent sausages, applications giving their require bands full with the war and had less with the bitter cold-we had 30degs. raw red hams and fatty smoked goose, ments to the local labour exchanges. time to devote to Jew-baiting. below zero one day is proving a had a lot of bottles of German cham- Another factor which produced Pérhaps, too, the Jew-baiters
were great test of the population's endur- pagne in its windows (mostly Henkell the buying rage in the German able to work off most of their spleen ance. Trocken, no doubt in deference to public were the reports, I believe on the Jews in Poland, who are go- Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, who used to travel for it), some twigs of Christmas tree, and, oh horror! card-
board imitation sausages and hams.
I
The central point of display was
a pyramid of boxes containing a proudly described as "Artificial meat extract. unrationed."
Use of the word ersatz, by the way, which would have described it more exactly, is verboten, on account of its associations.
The shirt shop down the Pots- damerstrasse, which used to call itself "London Style," had changed its name patriotically to "Deutsche Mode" (German Fashion) and had then closed.
The turnover from supplying a clientele permitted only 100 ration coupons' worth of clothes a year- (with a suit costing sixty coupons, & handkerchief five, socks ten, riot "to mention shoes at forty)-well, it just didn't justify the rent and taxes,
POTSDAMERPLATZ, BERLIN. "The shop windows, such as were not shuttered, werd
drab and de-, pressing.”
#
So all that remains now of the shirt shop is the shop sign and an well-founded, of an elegant photograph showing the on capital, both great supreme leader of Germany and German fashion himself, in an artistically soft velour hat and a
very he-man trench coat, with
collar turned up.
All the main shopping streets found
I'
imminent. levy and small,
Hidden larder of tinned food
This capital levy talk, I found,
of
full of closed shops. The was causing particular apprehension
some Jewish, friends Tauentzlenstrasse, the Kúrfuersten- among damm, in the west, Altmoabit and the mine who, despite all the tribula- Hermannstrasse, in the working-class tions heaped on their race, have quarters of the north and south. managed to go on living in Berlin, Wherever I went, in fact
What had happened was that the population, seized by an inflation panic, had tried to convert. their marks into goods.
and have even hidden away a large larder of tinned food and- Prague.
ham.
They told me that, like many other Jews living in Germany, You have heard about that from they had money secretly salted' Herr Funk, the German Minister of away abroad, some of which was Economics. They started buying up
on the pretence that it came from everything there was to be: had in relatives willing to support them. the shops.
The Germans were so anxious to They even bought cars without get hold of foreign exchange that tyres. They have laid the gars up in they even gave a specially favour- garages, in the expectation of being able rate of exchange, known as-un- able to use them or sell them in- the terstuetzungsmark (subsidy, mark). peace.
Geek 100 Swiss francs buying-00: German Carpets, pictures, furniture pianos/marks, instead of the official rate of all went in one roaring burst: of: 58 marks, frek trade,
water how What the Jews,are; afraid of is, that Shops, faced with this, the Government, in, their drive for found themselves unable to re-foreign currency, may décide to impri- stock. They had to close. The son all Jows getting financial aid of shop assistants, however, have this kind from abroad and then offer
な
You see, canals and rivers are fro- zen over. And this has made it im- possible for barges to bring supplies. The railways, on the other hand, are overburdened, while road trans- port by lorry is out of the question because of the lack of petrol...
When coal does arrive at the goods stations there are neither vehicles nor men available to transport it. The result is that many of the big blocks of flats in Berlin are without heating and hot water. **
Electric stoves are unobtainable. They were sold out within a few days of the shortage "first 'becoming mani- fest.
So all the people can do is to go to restaurants, hotels and station waiting rooms to keep wa
go to bed early at night.
(Continued on Page 16):
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