TO DEVIL’S ISLAND

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 11201, 25 August 1933, Page 3

TO DEVIL’S ISLAND

WAR-V EJTERAN ’ S TERRIBLE FATE One of the most amazing stories of the Great ,Vfar —the case of a German who fought against France and was afterward arrested because it was alleged that he was really a Frenchman, and as a result spent ten terrible years on Devil’s Island —has just been revealed. , • This “last prisoner of war” is Aliens Paoli Schwartz. He has, ■ now gained his freedom after -his friends in Germany had worked hard for his release since the day of his arrest, early in 1919, in the little Alsace town of Kehl.

Schwartz had German parents, but he was born in Corsica and given the name of a famous Cbrslcan patriot. Right through the war he wore the field grey of Germany, and at the end was demobilised. But be lived in territory occupied by the French, and during a great espionage drive his French Christian name was, noticed. One morning a French patrol arrested Schwartz and took him before the local military authorities. He-did not see his native country again for more than 13 years. He was charged with being a deserter from the French Army, a traitor who had fought against France. Vainly Schwartz protested that he was a German by parentage, speech, and feeling. He was born in French territory. He was a frenchman and a traitor the authorities declared. It was not until 1921 that his final trial came on. In spite of fierce protest- the sentence was passed. “Banishment to a fortress.” In other words, Devil’s Island, the land of lost men, the Island of the Doomed.

Naturally he planned to escape. He suffered the torments of the Island of the Doomed for two years, and. then with three other men be made a hid for freedom. Then one of the party took fright and backed out of the venture. They all returned to their quarters. Schwartz’s punishment was two weeks’ solitary confinement in a tiny cell under; the blazing sun. How for six years the man without a country survived a helpless living death on Devil’s Island is revealed in a new book, “The Island of the Doomed,” written by P. G. Ettighoffer, one of his countrymen. From the island Schwartz was transferred to the mainland, to Cayenne, where he got a job in the hospital and worked among the lepers for nearly four years. Finally, he became chief assistant in the hospital—a valuable man to the authorities. . . . Then in 1932 the years of undying effort bore fruit. Authority gave orders for the release of the man without a country, banished to Devil S Island. . Thirteen years after leaving his home town Schwartz came back, the last prisoner of war to gain freedom, and one of the few men to leave Devil’s Island alive.