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April 22, 1940.
THE NAZIS GOT ME
TWO words, spoken care-. lessly in private to one I thought was a sympathetic friend, doomed me to seven months of Nazi terror.
They cost me my nerve, 40 pounds in weight, and the right ever again to set foot in my native
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Monday, April 22, 1940. Wyndham St., Hongkong Telephone: 20015
THE prefix "Special to the Telegraph" le used by the "Hongkong Telegraph to Indicate tows which is strictly copyright under the provisions of the Telecommuni- rations Ordinance, 30. Such news bears the indication "U" Is receivad in Ilongkeng on the date of publication by the United Press Associations, who re serve all tights and forbid repubUcation, either wholly or in part without previous arrangemedi
Truth About 1918
HITLER, Goebbels, and their crew have so often asserted that the German Army was not defeated in 1918 that it is
possible they may have come to believe their own story. Certain-
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But that is no reason why the truth should not be told time and again, for the benefit of the British people and the British Army, a very large number of whom were not alive in that memorable year.
"It seems to me a pity,” writes Major-General Sir John David- son, "that the British Army of to-day should not be told of what their fathers and kinsmen did [22 years ago."
Sir John then tells in detail what happened from the begin. ning of August till Novomber, when, in a succession of great | attacks, they drove the Germans northward.
The sum of his account is that i the morale of the German Army was completely broken, and in the early days of November its retreat was turned into a dis- organised rout.
It had lost to the Allies, from August to November, nearly 400,000 prisoners and over 6,000 guns. There is no parallel, he says, for such a defeat on such a scale, and so complete, in the whole of military history.
If Germany wishes to boast, she can boast of sustaining a record defeat, and no words of her professional liars can distort that fact.
The "invincibility" of the. German Army, of which Hitler makes so much in his speeches, is nothing but an empty boast of a lying bully.
While visiting my wife's sister In Coblenz, I met an elderly woman who clicked her tongue BY- pathetically when she heard that my wife and I planned to begin life over again in America. I had made good money as a radio singer but recently the Goebbels
pro. pagarkia office' had refused me an actor's permit-one of my grand- parents was so lacking in foresight 75 years 'ngo na to marry a Jew.
"It's too bad," sighed my sister In-law's culler, "that you lost your Job. You sang nicely-nothing but good German gongs." She glanced at the wall, then pointed with a half-smile to a photograph of Hit ler with Julius Streicher, Ger- many's most fanatlenl Jew-balter. "That actor!" I exclaimed bit. terly. That was all.
✩✩ ✩ ✩
SIX days later and 400 miles away, in our home in Munich, my wife and I were awakened. very early in the morning by insistent pound- ing on the door.
I opened it, and there stood two plain-clothes men.
"Get dressed and come with us," they barked. "Why?"
.
"None of your business!!
I tried to reassure my wife, tell- ing her I'd be back in an hour or so. But that's the last I saw of her for seven months.
Al headquarters I discovered that the old woman who seemed so sorry for me was what we called a "200-percent Nazi." Sho had felt it her duty to tell the secret political pollee about my sneering remark.
During the next ten days I saw the cheerless inside of four of Munich's swarming jails, prisons where cells meant for seven held 20. One day I voiced to my cell- mates the question that was con- stantly in my mind: when would I be brought to trial?
"Trial!" repeated one man who looked like a ghost. "I've been here two years waiting for trial. I was unemployed for a year until I was enrolled--in-a-labour- bat-- talion. Then they sold they found o communist newspaper. In my kit and sent me here. But I never saw thal paper. I never had it, I tell
aga! Two years here without
trial
We had to sit on him. He was making too much noise.
✩
ANOTHER prisoner wore the black breeches of the Schutzstaffel, the most Nazi of Nazi units.
He had been a guard at Dachau, the dread concentration camp out- side Munich.
Those who were released from there were broken men with terror in their eyes, pledged on pain of further imprisonment not to tell their experiences,"
The boy to the black breeches was in the Munich Jall for two years because he gave two cigar- eites to a Dachan prisoner.
On the 11th day guards herded a dozen of us into a windowicas omnibus. Where were we going? Perhaps to trial? Each prisoner was locked in a tiny cell barely large enough in which to sit. 'SUts In the side gave 'ventilation and a chance to peep out. About an hour from the city I saw a road- sign flash by. Dachau!:
The camp is surrounded by n high wall, atudded with machine-, gun towers. Within the wall's a heavy, wire fence charged with high-voltage electricity. Behind that are two wooden fences, the space between them being so-called 'neutral ground;' to be seen there means death by a stream of machine-gun bullets.
Behind these escape-proof barrl- codes are barracks lodging more than 3,000 political prisoners, whose ages range from 10 to 70-Com- munists, Socialists, Jews, priests. and back-alid Nazis. Segregated into companies of about 100 men, they are guarded by hard-bolted, 200-percent Nazis, mostly between
A grim story of six months in a
German concentration camp
18 and 20 years old-young enough to have grown up in the cause, They are armed with guns and bayonets, but their real weapons are kicks.
I was assigned to a company of the most diamal, unhappy men -1. had ever seen, They had been Jawyers, doctors, former officials- mch of education and among Ger- many's best. Now, depreased and allent, without hope, they were walking dead, men without souls.
"How long have you been here?” I asked one of them. The man looked at me with expressionless eyes and turned away. I spoke to another. Again the expressionless eyes and he, too, turned away with- out a word.
A third brushing by me mul- tered, "Watch yourself, boy! Talk- ing now means trouble and plenty of it. I'll see you inter."
THAT was my welcome by my new comrades.
Before long 1, too, shunned new- comers, suspicious that they might be stool pigeons. Most of us had landed in Dachau because a care- less remark, like mine, was peated.
re-
The man who warned me not to talk was assigned to show me how to arrange my bedding antt locker.
"Do everything exactly as you're told" he advised. "IZ-you don't, they'll put you in the darkroom- solitary confinement; bread and water, in a room with no light, no heat and a guard with a bl whip." Our day began at five a.m. Breakfast consisted of one cup of -coffee" and a little black bread. At 5:30 came roll call and assign- ment of the day's work. Invariably one of the three Jewish companies was detailed to clean the camp Intrines. A prisoner whose work did not please a guard might be kleed into one of the open privies.
Strange things, those Aryan Inwa; my one Jewish grandparent prevented me from carnir my living in Germany as an Aryan, bat, having only one quarter Jewish blood, I did not have to clean camp latrines.
The prisoners marched off to work at six-usually to stand knee- deep in mud clearing swamps, or to back-breaking labour on rock ples. It made no difference whether a political prisoner was 19 or 70; If the camp doctor found him capable of hard labour, he was put afit. "Sometimes the older men dropped in their trucks. They were carried back to cump and we saw them no more.
✡
FIFTEEN armed guards watched each company.
If I didn't move fast enough to suit them a guard would go behind me, deliver a spine-rocking klek sad roar "Marsch! Marsch!" And I marched. How often did this happen? So many times I can't remember. Had it been once, it would have been a vivid memory, but I got used to it, and used to seeing othern get the boot,
At noon we returned to camp for lunch. Watery vegetable stew and black brend. We heard that meat was in the slew. I never saw any.
to speak freely. We rarely knew the full names of our fellow pet- soners. It was not healthy to know them, or too much about anything that went on at Dachau, Men who seemed to know much were taken away-where or for what we never learned. Spirits crushed, living in constant dread, preyed upon by unknown fears, we hadn't much destre to talk.
.
✩
*
FREE for two hours! For what? Tobacco, books and magazines were forbidden.
We had only Hitler's Volkischer Beobachter to read, the mast pro- paganda-ridden of all Nazi house
organs.
Once a month we were given
one sheet of nolepaper on which to write a closely supervised letter home. Once a month a censored letter was ollowed in from outside. Long bluck streaks on my wife's letters blotted out reports of what our familles were doing to get me out of camp. For six months I never knew whether 1. had been condemned without trial, or how long. I was to remain prisoner.
The unknown preyed upon my morale as it did upon the others', Here were 3,000 men, possessing some of the best independent minds in Germony, Everything that might occupy those minds was cnlcu- Intingly withheld. We were treated like dumb, driven cattle; and to be broken to dùmb, driven caltio's spirit and reactions was what we were there for. Dachau meunt mental death. What amition we had left was fixed upon one object: to be on our best behaviour in the hope of being released earlier,
And so, at seven, to bed. Ten hours in bed may sound like luxury. In reality they were torture for most of us couldn't alcep. Night after night we iny In the dark thinking, whispering our hopes and fears to each other. The wildest rumours swept through the barracks. Goering had committed auicide; Hitler was assassinated und we would be set at liberty next Saturday!
Some tortured souls managed to die by their own hands. One
TELLING
prisoner on kitchen detall secreted a piece of tin, slashed his wrists to and bled quietly and happily death in his bunk. Others knotted a few rags together, went out to the latrines and hung themselves in. the dark.
☆
THUS six months dragged by, day slowly following day, with the same brutal routine, until the time when I was. led from the barracks to the windowless omnibus that had brought me from Munich:
I was given neither reason nor destination and still no word about a trial. Finally a train took me to Coblenz where, after a month of solitary confinement, I was tnicen. into court,
My grievous crime against the German people was unfolded bo- fore three judges by the State's. Attorney and confirmed by the old woman who called upon my sinter- in-law that afternoon ages before.
One of the courtroom doors wasS ajar, and there stood my wife!
They wouldn't let her come [14. but during the 45 minutes my lawyer addressed the court we looked at each other, the tense and drawn and I a mental wreek. of 05 pounds.
The judges found me guilty and sentenced me to four months' im-- prisonment, to be deducted from. the time served while awaiting trial.
I was free! But before being re- leased I had to sign a pledge: "Whatever I have seen in a cen- centration camp or a prison I shall keep secret from the outside world. Violation of this, pledge will be punished by Imprisonment in a. Reich penitentiary."
My wife and I moved to Bremen in order to lose no time after get- ting our passports for America.
Finally they were issued, on con- . dition that I never seek to re-enter Germany,
☆
☆
EVEN now when my wife and I are with friends in a restaurant, I am jumpy when anything is said about Nazi. Germany and I lower my voice- lest I be overheard.
I cannot yet realize that I am
In a country where I may say what. I please.
GERMANY
THE TRUTH
Extracts from a talk 'in a recent B.B.C. broadcast to Germany by The Rt. Hon. C. R. Attlee, M.P.
WR
TE in Britain believe in freedom. We refuse to make a god'
of any man.
One of the rights which we hold dear is that of saying just what we please about our Government. Would not you like to do the same?
Would not you like to be able to say openly what you think about Hitler, Goering and Goebbels, just as the British worker can about Chamberlain, Simon and the rest?. It would be good. for Hitler.
Our Government knows what the people are thinking and has to pay regard to it. Week by week in the House of Com- mons the Ministers have to submit to be questioned by the
Half an hour later came inspec-workers' representatives, The poorest person in the land can
tion. The slightest disarray usual- ly meant a day or two in the "dark- room."
That was our universal fear.
Men who came back from it did not talk, but upon their bore backs I 5BW welts caused by learning National Socialism from a whip. Ignorance of what happened thero gave solitary confinement an even greater dread.
Afternoons until four were de- voted to "exercise in the Prusslan manner." Companies marched or half-trotted over the exercize Platz, and at the command "Down"! every man fell forward on his face. Up and over again. "Marich! Marsch!"
During this pastime come long Intervals not for rest but for in- struction, while standing in rigid formation, in the virtues of National
· Socialism and how to behave in the Third Reich,
At four we were back in the bar- racks for supper, black bread and vegetable stow. At Ave came a free hour out of doors, followed by an- other inside, For two hours a day we could talk. But 'conversation was cautious. Weeks passed before occupants of neighbouring bunks and I had sufflelent mutual confidence
have his grievance brought forward in public. Hitler does not know what you think: Dictators only know what their servants tell them.
•
British workers have long ago seen through all the catch- words about the glory of war and the destiny of particular races. to rule because of their superiority. They have no belief in im- perialism and the domination by one nation over others..
We have worked steadily and successfully to extend to all peoples in the British Empire the same freedom which we enjoy ourselves. We know that the conquest of other peoples does not benefit the workers. You know it too. If Hitler becomes the master of Europe, it will only add more millions to those who are under the rule of the Gestapo. Wherever there is dictatorship there is always police rule, terrorism and espionage.
E
Wo of the Labour Party have put forward our peace alms. We want to see a world where all peoples enjoy freedom and co-operate together for the common good. We are asking nothing from other peoples that we are not ourselves prepared to con- cede.
Germany can have peace now on honourable terms, which I am sure would meet all that any German working man or woman: wants, but your Government does not let you know this.
Your Government knows that it cannot win this war, but it dares not tell you the truth. It has already surrendered in the East to the U.S.S.R.
+
Despite all the power of the Nazi Party and the Gestapo, you, the people of Germany, can, if you will, stop your boys being slaughtered.
Wo want to see Germany free and joining with free nationa. to build a now world built on the foundations of social justice.