GERMAN POGROMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 115, 18 May 1933, Page 3

GERMAN POGROMS.

BARBARISM LOOSE. HITLER'S " GOLDEN AGE." WHERE WILE IT LEAD ? (By LION FEUCHTWANGER.) BERNE (Switzerland). March 31. Immediately before I loft America, and shortly before the German elections. I told my anxious friends abroad that any idea of pogroms in Germany was unthinkable. President Hiixlenburg's name and the solid foundations of German culture were pledges against such occurrences. During my journey across the Atlantic we received on the ship disturbing wireless reports regarding acts of violence against the Jews. These seemed incomprehensible, but in Paris 1 met the first refugees from Germany. The stories they related were dreadful. They told me some things compared with which the reports of the atrocities during the war paled. I found it hard to believe these accounts, although I knew tlint the people who told them were trustworthy ill every respect. In no way were they radical. They were democrats and members of the Catholic centre partiespacifists who all their lives had worked in favour of political mediation and negotiation, and men who hated all forms of exaggeration. However, they declared they had seen, with their own eyes, how attempts had been made to throw people out of underground trains in motion simply because they looked like Jews. They iiad seen people pulled from motor cars and beaten—women and young folk, too—because they were thought to bo Jewish. Despairing Stories. These refugees also had heard despairing stories of women whoso husbands and sons had been dragged out of bed and "inhumanly beaten, and about whom nothing more had been heard or seen. These men who had been taken away had not been allowed to see wife or sou or counsel, and had disappeared no one knows where.

Where, for instance, these people asked, is the late Jewish police vice-presi-dent of Berlin, Bernhart Weiss? Day after day, these refugees insisted, bodies are discovered mutilated beyond identification. Every Jew in Germany, they said, must expect to be assaulted in the street or to be dragged out of bed and arrested to have his goods and property destroyed, while complaints are met with a shrug from Minister Goering and the remark: "Where timber is planed, shavings must drop off." What has, in fact, happened in Germany? Six hundred thousand very young men to whom every characteristic can be acknowledged, except moderation, have been stirred up by every means against the workmen and the. Jews. These young men have been supplied with arms and have been given power such as has never been granted to a policeman in Germany. But that the six hundred thousand should have gone as far as they did probably was not anticipated, even by Minister Goering. Wo shall never know how many people have been killed during these days simply because they looked like Jews or bore Jewish names, or how many were shot "while trying to escape."

Indiscriminate Savagery. We shall never know to what illtreatment Jewish prisoners were subjected. The men of the red cross are not allowed to attend people who have been ill-treated, and information about many of those who disappeared is refused. It is even admitted officially that Bavarian Minister Stuetzel who enjoys the highest regard of a majoiity of the people was thrashed by Nazi Storm Troopers. It is not contradicted that the Storm Troopers, in a spirit of levity, "rubbed down," as the saying goes, a largo number of Jews who probably will never get over the rubbing down for the rest of their lives. . „ . I am afraid that, taking it all 111 all, people who say that Germany has never seen such a measure of barbarism in thirty years as it sees to-day are right. Compared with the outrages which have been committed, what has happened to me is nothing but a trifle, and I am surprised that in view of other horrors any notice should be taken of it. My house in Berlin is a beautiful one, I admit, and I was looking forward to being in it again and. enjoying its peace after my hectic journey through America. However, I had been careless. It is true that while in America I had refused absolutely to talk about Chancellor Hitler, and had refused unusually hio-h fees to lecture about liim, but I had, in reply to urgent questions, uttered a couple of brief sentences about Hitler's literary style. This strictly professional appreciation, which I "supported by quotations from studies in style of the famous philo<rist, Eduard Engel,. was answered by Hitler's men confiscating my wifes motor car and threatening my servants with revolvers, while manusenpta sent to me by authors to read were either taken away or destroyed, The same thin" was done with notices aud manuscripts of my new half-finished novel, with the result that years of work has been lost. I believe tliat it was their intention to shoot me, but this failed owin"- to my absence. Instead, they tore °up, with suitable objurgations, a number of portraits, mostly of foreign notables, including that of the wife o President Roosevelt.

Unequalled Since 14th Ceiitury. I assume that the Storm Troopers alone are responsible for all they have done —that must surely be so. It is ceitain that President Hindenburg had no idea of the outrages. Probably Chancellor Hitler, "-00, has had nothing to do with these things personally. And Minister Goering can scarcely be suspected of complicity. The gravity of the situation lies in the fact that the Government clearly no longer possesses any authority over its so-called police organisation. The unfortunate thing is that these people have taken the former wild speeches of Hitler too literally. were promised that when the national revolution began the golden age wotild set in at once. Now they want the heads which they had been promised they would see rolling 011 the ground. They want lamp posts decorated with dead bodies. The result is pogroms such as Germany has not seen since the Jewish persecutions of the fourteenth century. I greatly pray that the Government may succeed in calling a halt before the ill-treatment, the torture, the slaughter of the thousands of Socialists, Catholics and Jews leads to a civil war such as the world has never seen.