New Zealand Woman In Hands of Gestapo

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 58, 9 March 1945, Page 5

New Zealand Woman In Hands of Gestapo

LONDON, March 7. When the Daily Mail’s correspondent, Miss Rhona Churchill, knocked at the door of No. 42 Ludendorff Allee, at Krefeld, Germany, it was opened by the Scottish-born Mrs. Betty Oertel, daughter of Professor John Rankinc Brown, of Victoria university College, Wellington, New Zealand, who burst into tears. Miss Churchill was the first English-speaking woman she had seen during the war. Mrs. Oertel, who was a nervous wreck, was unable to speak without sobbing between sentences. She told how she fell in love with a German at Glasgow, 13 years ago. She has an English son, Tony, aged 19, by a former marriage, a son, Bruno, aged 11, who is British-horn, and a third son, Paul, who was born during the war and therefore German. She and her husband both wanted to flee from Germany when the war seemed imminent, but she was desperately ill at the time. “The first thing after the outbreak of the war Bruno’s headmaster wrote a rude letter saying he could not attend school unless he became a German citizen,” said Mrs. Oertel. “I suffered agonies in shopping because children used to call me out and spit. My maid complained about the deliberate destroying of Cologne. I quoted Hitler’s speech, ‘We will destroy their cities one after another’ to prove that tlw Germans started indiscriminate bombing. She reported me to the Gestapo and they took me to gaol, where 1 was labelled a political prisoner without trial, and not told how long I would have to stay. They gave me a blanket stained 'With blood and I was in solitary confinement. “At first I never had any visitors,” said Mrs. Oertel. “My husband bribed the Nazis to release me after three weeks. They wanted my eldest son Tony to sign away his British nationality and join the German army. We bribed them from that with bottles of brandy and cigars. You latterly could bribe a Nazi with a couple of cigars. The second boy, Bruno, suffered terribly at school and returned two or three times a week bruised or with his clothes torn, but he always said, ‘Mummy, I am glad I am not really a German.’ ” Mrs. Oertel and her husband listened -to the London news every evening after the children were asleep. “As the poor Germans became shabbier, so the Nazis’ wives became smarter,” added Mrs. Oeretel. “Their tables were more laden with food. The people in Krefeld until six weeks ago were 100 per cent. Nazi and very hostile to Britain and America. Then they suddenly changed. The leading Nazis left the city for the east and those who stayed began saying they had never wanted war, knew it was over, and were glad the Nazis had no hatred for Britain or America. Women who used to push me from the grocer’s made way for me and smiled. Now, they tell you they always hated the Nazis. I don’t believe them.”