NEW YORK NAZIS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 48, Issue 2818, 5 October 1938, Page 2

NEW YORK NAZIS

DEPRIVED OF CIVIL RIGHTS JUDGE CRITICISES SEVERELY After a retirement of only (fifteen minutes, a Long Island jury found the German-American Settlement League, which operates a camp on Long Island for Nazi sympathisers and the league’s six incorporators guilty of violating the State Civil Rights law. Severely criticising the Nazi theories aired in his court during the four-day trial, Judge Barron Hill imposed fines totalling 1300, ordered the league president to be imprisoned for a year, and placed five others under suspended sentence. “Things went on in this court that I didn’t believe could happen,” his Honour remarked, adding that he was sending a copy of the record to the proper Federal authority. Fritz Kuhn, notorious as leader of Nazi activities in the United States for the past three years, truculently remarked that the conviction would not have the slightest effect on the camp; in fact, they were building new camps in various' parts of the country. Kuhn had just returned from a visit to Germany. The law on which the indictment was based was passed in 1923, as a measure against the Ku Klux Klan. It requires organisations whose members take an oath to file with the Secretary of State lists of their members, officer’s, and regulations. The State contended that the GermanAmerican Bund has a secret oath, and that only members of the bund can join the camp. Addressing von Meuller, who was sent to gaol, the Judge said: “You are the guiding spirit in the camp. Your attitude on the witness stand, and your attitude when the jury rendered their verdict, was one of contempt.”