Signs Of Nazism In West Germany

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29102, 14 January 1960, Page 2

Signs Of Nazism In West Germany

Although Marianne Weststrate is willing to dismiss the recent painting of swastikas on Christchurch buildings as “probably mere hoodlum pranks,” she has returned to Christchurch somewhat disturbed about the signs of an upsurge of Nazism in West Germany.

Marianne Weststrate was a child in Holland during World War 11. To hear Hitler extolled—for the autobahns he built and what he did for the Fatherland—by some Germans, galled the young Dutch woman when she was in Germany last year.

“Although there was no sign of Nazi demonstrations. I was told there are about 92 Nazi groups in Germany,” she said yesterday. “Sometimes I would se : e a swastika on a bridge and wonder why it had not been erased.” Miss Weststrate read in a German magazine interviews with school children who said they had been taught “all the good points” about Hitler. On the other hand, she met many Germans who expressed strong opinions against Nazism and re-armament. Trying To Forget “All the Germans I knew were trying to forget the war and were trying, too, to make it clear that they wanted to be friends with their former enemies—Dutch. Russians, British and others,” she said. Miss Weststrate came to live in Christchurch in 1950 when her

father, Professor C. Weststrate, was appointed professor of economics at the University of Canterbury. She attended Rangiruru school, graduated B.A. from the university then taught English and French at the Fairlie District High School. When she returned to Europe in 1958 she followed up her interest in the ecumenical movement and joined a work camp in North Sweden conducted by the World Council of Churches. From there she decided to go to Austria to work with the council among refugees. The urgent need to resettle or emigrate these refugees has made a lasting impression on her mind.

“There are still about 15.000 refugees in Austria alone and if they stay in camps for two years they just rot,” she said. “They become so demoralised that they cannot adapt themselves to the responsibility of community life. They cannot be left there.” The refugees include Hungarians, Jugoslavs, Russians, Poles, and Czechs. Austria is the

only country in which Hungarians and Jugoslavs can seek refuge. At Girls’ Home In Austria, Miss Weststrate worked at a teenage girls home conducted by the World Council of Churches at Badgastein. She has the highest praise for the council and its tremendous efforts to help these refugees.

“The World Council of Churches will take anyone into its camps, including those refugees whom other organisations would not touch,” she said. The council has taken responsbility for about 25 per cent, of the 15.000 refugees in Austria. The council’s projects include building flats in cities for refugees who leave the camps, a trade training school for boys, a communal trade centre, homes for small children, for girls, boys and old folk. It was very difficult for New Zealanders, with their high standard of living and security, to understand the desperate plight of refugees in Austria, she said.

Austria, about a third of the size of New Zealand, has a population of 7 million, including 275,000 refugees who have become naturalised Austrians in the last 10 years. The low standard of living in the country is indicated by these figures: 85 per cent, of the population in Vienna live in one room; only 2 per cent, live in flats containing four rooms or more.