EVE OF CRISIS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 107, 2 November 1938, Page 10

EVE OF CRISIS

ON CZECH FRONTIER

LIFE IN A GERMAN VILLAGE

A FRIENDLY PEOPLE

(Written for "The Post" by M.H.)

LONDON, October 2.

In these last days it has seemed impossible to think or write of anything but the immediate danger of war. Now that relief has come, I hope some New Zealanders will still be interested in the account of a visit to Germany made during the days when tension over Czechoslovakia was steadily mounting. We had to change trains five times to get from Berlin to our village in the Erzgebirge, on the Czech frontier. The last train was a friendly little affair. The driver smoked a cigar, axid our fellow-passengers told us with a smile that it was forbidden to gather wild flowers while the train was in motion! We talked to the villagers as we puffed along the streets clanging our bell, and in the forests the branches of the pines brushed against the window panes. At the terminus we were met by many small boys, one of whom put our luggage into a hand-cart and pulled it rattling after him. We followed up the hill through the forest of pine trees until we came to a clearing, where stood the old house in which we were to stay. In the living-room stood the three-storeyed wood-burning oven that is typical of the Erzgebirge. The bench that runs round three sides of the oven is a grand place to sit in the cold weather.

In the days that followed we walked in the forest, gathered red preisselberren, and hunted for the gnomeshaped toadstools under the dark trees. We learnt to make soup from the berries and to know the tasty toadstools from the poisonous. In the evenings we read and talked, sitting round the / oven. BORDER' TENSION. ~ We' saw no newspapers, and "could all but forget the political storms ragk ing over the frontier that was only 15 minutes' walk away. We had, it is true, to carry passports, and on our wanderings we occasionally met a German official who asked to see them. But we got into Czechoslovakia several times without noticing it. The frontier was marked in parts by a shallow ditch, elsewhere only by signposts with C.S. on one side and D. (Deutschland) on the other. The number of Customs officials had been increased, and all the little frontier villages had built new houses to receive them. As time went on we were increasingly reminded of international 4 tension. The lorry that was to have taken us and the school children to the foot of a mountain we all wished, to climb was

commandeered to help with the fortifi-

cations on the western frontier. The school children were being told that Hitler was to revive the glories of the Germanic Empire under Charlemagne.

In * the entrance to the school hung a map of Czechoslovakia with a large portion blacked in to show the German population, and beneath it the familiar words. "Em Reich, em Folk, em Fuhrer." Though newspapers wererare, wirelesses were common and were bringing news of German-Czech tension. When we visited our neighbours, we found the mother and daughters deftlymaking lace as they listened to the wireless giving them the latest batch of Czech atrocities. The stationmaster, a kindly man, to whom we confided our fears of war, had been listening in too. He said to us: "Go home to your country and tell them that as long as , there is a Hitler there will be no war." But then, pointing to Czechoslovakia on the map, he added: "But here there is Communismj We would march, gladly, every man of us, against that country. Auf weidersehen, Fraulein, tell them that Hitler is against war . and Communism!" PROPAGANDA AND JEWS. Dr. Goebbels's propaganda had done good work. THe hateful "Stunner" and the correct notices about Jews being the cause of all evils were duly posted up. Yet the villagers had not fully learnt their lesson. We had made a Jewish friend in the village, and though she was proud of her race and was conspicuous because of her refusal to use the customary words of greeting, "Heil Hitler," she was welcomed everywhere. We visited together the baker, the milkman, the shoemaker, the woodcutter, and the minister. The shoemaker's son entertained us by playing the accordion while his father put nails in my shoes, and, when all was done, they told me there was no charge! One of our hosts was the leading Nazi of the village. He was risking his position by his friendship with a Jewess. The minister greeted- our friend as warmly as the shoemaker had. He was a member of the Confessional Church arid spoke .with sorrow of Pastor Niemoller's fate and of all the difficulties of his church. He told us that the officially encouraged German Christians had had no success in their attempts to bring pressure upon him and his parish. He had ministered to his people for many years, and they had not listened to the new doctrines which would make the church a servant to the National Socialist Party. Through this minister we met a party of theological students. They belonged to this same Confessional Church that is so beset with troubles, and some of the men they looked to as leaders were in concentration camps. But they were young enough to have been, influenced by Nazi ideology. They had all done their "Arbeltsdienst," that is, spent six months reclaiming land or making roads and receiving a political education. They had yet to do two years' military service. <f They asked us what we thought of Germany. ' ' "We like the German people, but we oan't forgive the Government its treatment of the Jews." They replied: "But our Lord told ' you you must forgive! Have not the Jews brought the judgment of God on their own heads by crucifying Christ?" They went on to tell us we ought not to judge the Jewish question unless we understood how powerful and dangerous the Jews had been in Germany before Hitler came. The Government had, perhaps, gone too far, but it was necessary for them to do something. Individual Jews might be loved, but they must regard the Jewish race as their enemies. It was my turn to remember that Christ had told us to forgive our enemies! HITLER AND GERMANY. They repeated that they thought Hitler's Jewish policy too severe, but begged me to think of what he had done ' for Germany. He had united the j country, abolished unemployment, oc-; cupied the Rhineland, and brought! Austria home to 'the Reich. What German could be anything but grate-j ful? • Today my friends will have yet another reason for gratitude. The rich Czech provinces have come home too!| After this conversation we were glad

to visit the milkman, to admire his beautiful daughter, and to sympathise with the cow who in these districts spends her whole life in the house. We exchanged courtesies and made hopeful comments about the weather —which was invariably bad; but the difficulties of German, plus the Erzgebirge dialect, limited our conversation.

Yet before we left the forests and mountains for the sophisticated beau^ ties of Dresden, we had learnt to understand and admire these kindly and industrious peasants, who, despite the thoroughness of Nazi propaganda, hated neither Jew nor Christian.