GERMAN TERROR

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 124, 29 May 1933, Page 7

GERMAN TERROR

AN 'AMAZED OBSERVER

F EUCHTWANGER'S NEWS v — JiIOYEL DESTROYED

Immediately before I left America, and | shortly before the German' el^ctio os, I told my anxious friends abroad th it any idea of pogroms in Germany wiis unthinkable. President yon Hind jnburg's name and tho solid foundations of German culture were pledges airainst such occurrences, writes Lion 3 feuchtwanger, the novelist, in the '* New York Times." 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 I 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 believo these accounts, although I knew that tho people who told them were trustworthy in every respect. In no way were they radical. They were democrats and members of the Catholic Centre parties—pacifists who all the^r 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 Jows. They had seen people pulled from motor-cars and beaten—women and young folk, too —because they were thought to bo Jewish. DRAGGED FROM BED. These refugees also had heard de-spairi-ng stories of women whose husbands and sons had been dragged out of bed and inhumanly beaten, and of whom nothing more had been heard or seen. These men who had been taken away had i»t been allowed to see wife or son or counsel, and had disappeared no one knew where. Where, for instance, these people asked, was tho late Jewish Police VicePresident 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 put 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 ovcry characteristic can be acknowledged except moderation have been stirred up by every means against the workmen and tho Jews. These young men have been supplied ■with arms and have been given power such as has never been granted to policemen in Germany. Thus equipped, they have been turned loose upon tho people and the life and property of tho greater part of the people have been subordinated to them. SHRUGS, HIS SHOULDERS. It had been reckoned that personal feelings—revenge, self-inter-est and lust, cruelty of individuals— would thus como out. Probably that was deliberately reckoned upon. Minister Goering's'shrug of his shoulders leads one to assume that this was so. But that the 600,000 should have gone as far as they did probably was not anticipated, even by Herr Goering. Wo shall never know how many peoplo 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." We shall never know to what illtreatment Jewish prisoners were subjected. The men of the Eed 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 the Bavarian Minister Stuetzel, who enjoys. the highest regard of a majority 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 large number of Jews who probably will never get over the rubbing down for the rest of their lives. I am afraid, taking it all in all, people who say that Germany has never seen such a measure of barbarism in thirty years as it sees today are right. Compared with the outrages -which have bee.n committed, what has happened to me is nothing but a trifle, and I am surprised that in view of other horrors any notico should be taken of it. My house in Berlin is a beautiful ■one, I admit, and I was looking forivard 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 high fees to lecture about him, .but I had, in reply to urgent questions, uttered a couple of brief sen? tences about Hitler's literary style. WORK DESTROYED. This strictly professional appreciation, which I supported by quotations from studies in style of tho famous philologist Eduard Engel, was answered by Hitler's men confiscating my wife's motor-car and threatening my servants with revolvers, while manuscripts sent to me by authors to read were either taken away or destroyed. The same thing was done with notes and manuscripts of my new half-finished novel, with the result that years of work have been lost. I believe'that it was their intention to shoot mo, but this failed owing to my absence. Instead, they tore up, with suitable objurgations, a number of portraits, mostly of foreign notables, including that of the wife' of President Eoosevelt. I assume that the Storm Troopers alone are responsible for all they have done —that must surely be so. It is certain- that President yon Hindenburg has no idea of the outrages. Probably Chancellor Hitler, too, has had nothing to do with these things personally. And Minister Goering can scarcely be suspected of complicity. The gravity of tho 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. They were promised that when the national revolution began the golden ago would set in at once. Now they want the heads which they had been promised they would see rolling on the ground. They want lampposts decorated with dead bodies. The result is pogroms such as Germany has not seen pince 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 lead to a civil war such as the world has never seen.

Such of the cable news on this pace as Is so headed has appeared In "The Times" and Is cabled to Australia and New Zealand by special permission. It should be understood that the opinions are not those of "The Times" unless expressly stated to be so.