THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, July 17, 1944. PAYMENT FOR LIDICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25589, 17 July 1944, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, July 17, 1944. PAYMENT FOR LIDICE

The Nazis, who must now realise that they can expect no quarter from the Allies in the West, and have long known that they will have no mercy from the victorious enemy to the east, Soviet Russia, are reacting to type. The destruction of the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane, which consisted simply of the massacring of every one but seven of its 750 to 800 inhabitants, and the razing of every building, is not easy to comprehend, even with Lidice as a byword to the excesses of which the SS Organisation is capable. It is not easy or pleasant to believe in such thorough-going barbarity. The report published this morning of the fate, of the Jewish population of Vilna, of which three pathetic representatives are said to survive, is not incredible; not because such a revolting manifestation of anti-Semit-ism is explainable on military or political or racial grounds, but because the policy of destruction of the Jews, literally by the hundred thousand, has been faithfully pursued by the Gestapo in Germany and throughout Eastern Europe. The evil genius of the Nazi secret police, Heinrich Himmler, has made it his special duty to carry out his paranoic master’s public declaration, repeated in February of 1942, that “ the Jew will be exterminated.” And just as there is nothing reasonable in the obliteration of Lidice and Oradour, or the campaign for the destruction of European Jewry, so there can be no reasoning with the authors of these crimes-r-now or in the future. This much is apparent to the sequestered New Zealander, who has not the historical and emotional background that would allow a full comprehension of the diabolical purpose of Nazi-ism towards the non-Germanic peoples; who can have no real understanding, such as has been ruthlessly impressed upon the Germans, no less than the alien peoples of Europe under German domination, of the significance of the Volkgeist, which cannot be a living reality, unless the Volk are made racially pure and the “impure” of blood are eliminated.

Lord Vansittart, who is notoriously no lover of the Germanic peoples, will not lack support for his proposal to the House of Lords that the Gestapo, the chosen instrument of Hitler in his maniacal designs to purge Europe, should be outlawed as “ Criminal No. 1 ” in the bringing to judgment of those responsible for the Nazi terror. But the reply of Lord Cranborne, that this proposal “ was extremely drastic and had farreaching implications,” requires to be understood. It does not mean, as Lord Cranborne’s ready acquiescence in Lord Vansittart’s general denunciation of the Gestapo should make perfectly clear, that the British Government intends to compromise with this “devilish organisation” any more than with the members of the Nazi hierarchy, who will be brought to account as the ringleaders and instigators of mass crimes they may not personally have committed. But Himmler’s organisation in its entirety comprehends not only a widespread police and espionage system, but also a special army, the Schutz-Staffel. It has its own fully-motorised divisions, including some twenty air squadrons, and consists in all of an estimated 600,000 men. On occasion SS divisions have ■ served with the Wehrmacht, by which the SS organisation is hated and feared; but mainly it takes over in occupied territories, dispensing such justice as Lidice knew, and Oradour, and the ghetto populations of® Poland, while it remains as the core of German power and resistance on the home front. The outlawing of such a massive organisation might be easy and, in a grim sense, delectable, in theory. In actual practice, carried to its logical conclusion, it might involve a new terror in Europe, concentrated in Germany, that would reproduce the scale of mass murder, if not its unrestrained ferocity, in which the SS has specialised. .Such an undertaking as Lord Vansittart sought of the Government* could not be carelessly given. Lord Cranborne could repeat emphatically the categorical assurances of the Allied leaders that the war criminals of Germany will be brought to trial and punishment. The methods by which justice will be done must be the subject of close study and planning by the Allied authorities. But it is certain that Himmler. will not be allowed to enjoy the 2,200,000-dollar fortune that he is said to have invested in Latin America.