'PLAIN ROBBERY'

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 109, 11 May 1933, Page 7

'PLAIN ROBBERY'

PROPERTY SEIZED.

ACTION IN GERMANY. Blow at, Socialism Condemned By British Press. EXECUTION FOR MURDERS. (United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, May 10. Reports from Berlin state that the Government has seized the entire property and funds of the Social Democrats and the Republican, Reichsbanner and Socialist newspapers. The "Daily Herald" says the seizure of Socialist property is evidence that Germany i 3 rattled and has gone back to barbarism. The property is valued at over £3,000,000. This is plain highway robbery.

A Berlin dispatch says that the seized property includes 135 newspapers., and numerous sports clubs and co-opcrative stores, which have now been placed under Nazi control. Captain Goering, Premier of Prussia and Controller of Police, has issued a decree severing the connection between the armed police and the storm troops and Steel Helmets and restricting the power to make arrests to the police. The public has been surprised at the execution of three murderers, as death sentences under the late regime almost automatically were commuted to penal servitude. Restoring Respect for Justice. It is explained that it is part of the Hitlerite policy to restore the respect of the people for German justice. Herren Fritz Blucthged, Wilhelm Springbrun and Carl Beurath, prominent directors with Anglo-American affiliations, who developed the international silk industry, have been arrested on charges of falsifying balancesheets. Others arrested include Hcrr Gerstoll, director of the • Ch'arlottenburg waterworks, Herr Kohmert, a banker, and Count Zueulenburg Prassen, banker and landowner. They are charged with fraud. A message from Munich states that Hcrr Fritz Dressel, leader of the Communists in the Bavarian Diet, committed suicide in the Dachau concentration camp. Herr Hans Heimler, a Communist member of the Reichstag, made a sensational escape from the camp in spite of a high fence of barbed-wire charged with electricity. Herr Hitler has banned "The Star," owing to its criticisms of the Nazis. In retaliation for banning CzechoSlovakian newspapers, Czecho-Slovakia has prohibited the circulation of 200 German daily and weekly journals.