UNDER THE NAZI HEEL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 24030, 30 July 1941, Page 6

UNDER THE NAZI HEEL

According to the account given by a refugee who recently escaped from Norway, the people of that unfortunate country will be face to face with starvation next spring. Their slender resources have been so depleted by ruthless plunder that they will not have enough to carry them along to the next harvest. If general physical suffering becomes a consequence of living under the heel of the Nazi, it will add one more to the misfortunes the people have already experienced. It so happens that Norway is the' one occupied country concerning which direct and documented information is in British hands. When a raiding force seized and temporarily held the Lofoten Islands, it gained possession of official instructions which had been issued to officers of the occupying forces. These documents, which were published as a British White Paper, show the systematic way in which the Germans set about suppressing Norwegian liberties and making the whole administration of the country conform to the Nazi pattern. They also give clear indications of the determined, if necessarily largely passive, resistance the Norwegians showed to all attempts to conciliate them, and in particular, of the loathing they had for the

Quisling movement and all associated with it. Under German rule representative government in both the national and local fields has been destroyed. The law courts have been robbed of all power to safeguard personal liberty. When the entire Supreme Court Bench resigned, a new body with severely restricted functions was appointed. A rigorous censorship has suppressed all freedom of expression in speech or writing. These are, in part, the penalty Norway pays for having succumbed to the Nazi onslaught. »Now, as if the country's cup was not yet full enough, there is added the threat of hunger and want.