Gestapo Hunt For Strasser Is Still On

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 183, 3 August 1940, Page 1 (Supplement)

Gestapo Hunt For Strasser Is Still On

FFHE LONG ARM of the Gestapo, it is reported in an American Associated Press message from Berlin, has reached oat to discover the hiding place of two of the men whom the Nazis hate most. They are Otto Strasser, leader of the so-called " Black Front/ , and Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish-Polish youth. Of the two, Strasser is the more important politically, Grynszpqn of the more significance historically up to now. Strasser is the main opponent of Hitler inside Germany. Grynszpan is the youth whose murder of Ernst vor. Rath, the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, in November, 1938, led to the terrible Jewish purge in Germany, which shocked the world.

OTRASSER served in the World War though he was not seventeen years old when it began. He volunteered and was drafted to the Fourth Artillery ißegiment, won the Iron Cross for his role in capturing a British battery, and Iwas promoted lieutenant. Sick and crippled with sciatica after the war, he .worked for a dgree at Munich University. In 1925 he joined the National 6ocialist Party in which his brother Gregor was already a regional leader. Five years later, Strasser the Sociallet, seeing through -the shams of Hitler tile "National Socialist," left the party. But he formed his Black ("black" here means "secret") Front, gathered; round aim the true Socialists in the.ranks ef the Brown Shirts, and worked for the day when Hitler,should betray his promises. From that time his war with Hitler has been continuous. night to Thurinfta. When the Nazis burnt the "Reichstag in February, 1933, Strasser fled to a secret rendezvous in Thuringia, for he knew that the terror would be unleashed that night. But he discovered that one of his followers had been tortured into revealing his hidinje-place •od again he fled. From that day he

began a game of deadly hide and seek with the Nazis and finally crossed into Austria. Gregor Strasser, who trusted Hitler, was murdered by Hitler's men. ■In' Vienna Otto Strasser carried on his work. The Black Front extended to Austria, and his newspaper, "Dsr Schwarze Sender"" ("The Black Broadcaster"), was smuggled over the frontier into the Reich. In Vienna, however, the Nazis tried to kidnap but found that he had gone to Czechoslovakia, which he was prospecting: in. case of a German march into Austria. Learning of the raid on his flat at once fled to Prague and began his war over again. ■ Worked Among: Czechs For Years IN Prague, among the Czechs who were no admirers of Hitler, he felt : safe, and the work of sending propaganda to the Reich was resumed. G*ri: mans helped him in the task. He used envelopes of the German Medical Association to carry 50,000 copies of one • μ-oiphlet, the envelopes not even being i sea(ed, and once he used copies of the i stationery of the German Jurists' Asso-,

ciation for the same purpose. A third device was the use of labels no bigger than a postage stamp which declared "The Black Front will oust Hitler." In 1934 came another dramatic development. With Rudolph Formis, an excellent radio engineer and a close friend, he established a secret radio station at Zahori, a week-end inn forty miles from Prague. From here three transmissions an - hour were given. The was in Formis's bedroom in the loft of the inn. Discovered by Gestapo. ' But by January, 1935, the Gestapo had run the station down. A pair of German lovers visited the inn, a business man and a beautiful blonde girl. It is not known what happened after this, but it is declared that after Formis was photographed with the girl her "lover" flew back to Berlin with the picture, to make sure that this was the right man, and the following night Formis was murdered, and the girl, whether by accident or by reason of the fact that Formis tried to defend himself, was also dead. Strasser worked on in Prague for another two years. Then Hitler came. While the armies were moving forward into the occupied zones, Strasser, in an aeroplane, was passing overhead towards Switzerland.

sador. He had no success, but managed to see the Third Secretary, von Rath. It is not clear what happened then, quite possibly he was taunted or abused, but he pulled out a pistol and shot Ton Rath. Signal for New and Brutal Pogrom FITHE result was an appalling outA break of vindictiveness in Germany, some of it directed against the helpless and old and weak, all of it a deliberate policy of oppression pf the Jews. Even Germans were sickened, and confessed to foreign residents that they were distressed by this brutality. A heavy fine was levied on the Jews, and it later became rather ominously clear that the preparations for some of the attacks had been made in advance of the murder. Von Rath was given a funeral attended by Nazi leaders and replete with flowers. Jewish women and children were driven into the streets. The chorus of world condemnation was powerful, and the United States summoned its Ambassador home and has not had one in Germany since. On July 26 last year Grynszpan underwent his last questioning by a Magistrate before his trial, and testified that he never intended to kill Ton Rath. A few weeks later Europe was at war and he sought his release to fight against Germany. It was refused.

Blamed for Munich Bomb Explosion A FEW weeks after the outbreak of war came the bomb explosion in the Munich beer hall, . which the Nazis declared had been engineered by two British secret service men and by Otto Strasser, "whose Secret Sender was destroyed on January 26, 1935, by two SS leaders in execution of their orders." Strasser replied that -the bomb had been planted by the.Nazis themselves for purposes of propaganda against Britain. It was in Paris that Strasser next continued his work. He hoped for military setbacks which .would strengthen the Black Front and .give it a chance to take more active steps against the Hitler regime. He is reported to have' feared a deal with the Germans for the deposition of Hitler and the : enthronement of Goering in his stead. Hopes For Overthrow. But his ultimate faith has been in the overthrow of the Nazi regime by men of social conscience, some from the National . Socialist ranks and some from the ranks of the workers —in fact, his own Black Front. Grynszpan, it is almost forgotten now, kept pestering the German Embassy in Paris two years ago because he wanted to see the Ambas-