FRIGHTFUL BARBARISM

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18067, 19 April 1933, Page 7

FRIGHTFUL BARBARISM

GERMAN JEWS’ PLIGHT *‘BROWN TERROR” REIGN LONDON, April 11. The civilised mind cannot accommodate the ever-growing accumulation of horrors associated with the “brown terror,” writes the Berlin correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Search below the apparently tranquil surfaces pf cities and, villages alike discloses frightful barbarisms, defeating all modern analogies. Armed gangsters, supported by an armed Government, oppose the defeated Republicans and the helpless Jews. Zola and Dostpieffsky would need huge volumes to describe the wanton systematised terror.

Wurtemburg and Aachen seem free from the cruder barbarisms of Berlin, which represents the average for Germany. Silesia, and Brunswick are worst treated. Dozens of beatings at Cassel have left offenceless victims bleeding, lacerated, and dazed —almost out-of-mind wrecks.

They conform to a general plan apr plied throughout Germany, and perpetrated in cold blood in “Brown House” torture chambers.

These are but a fraction of the total panic.

FEAR OF REPRISALS

Fear of reprisals forbids all but tile boldest from speaking, even privately, about the hell undergone. The personal statements of courageous doctors, certificates, and also photographs establish a fraction of the truth about Cassel, which is a fraction of the truth about Germany. An eminent Conservative associated with the Nationalists estimates that the number of beatings is 20.000. The Berlin correspondent of the News-Chronicle says • that high-placed members of the German Cabinet seem bent on retarding the more humane treatment of the Jews. Only 35 out of the 2500 Jewish lawyers in Berliu have yet been admitted to the courts. The position of Jewish doctors and students is equally unsatisfactory, Gentiles demanding their complete removal from the academic professions. Recalling the ancient Hebrew tradition of Pharaoh standing at the gates of Gehennorn through successive ages, asking persecutors of the Jews: “Did ye learn nothing from me?” the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Hertz, addressing the Passover Festival congregation at St. John’s Wood Synagogue, commented on the similarity of the events in ancient Egypt with those of Germany. “The services which the Jews rendered the country arc ignored,” lie said, “and Herr Hitler is seeking, as the Egyptians did, to make the Jews a helot class. True, Germany stopped short of condemning Jewish boys to be cast into the river, but what the Germans are doing to the Jewish professional classes is tantamount to a sentence of economic death.” The Nazi Youth Movement has occuied the headquarters of the National Federation of Youth, after securing domination of that organisation, with control of 2000 hikers’ hostels.

WOMAN’S ORDEAL STRIPPED AND FLOGGED LONDON, April 1. Emphasising that responsible correspondents in Germany have not transmitted one-twentieth of the reports, of brutalities on private premises brought under their notice, the Berlin correspondent oi the Times vouches for the case of Fran Marie Jankowski, 46, a resident of Kopenick. Belonging to the best German work-ing-class type, courageous and friendly, and a simple Socialist, she has long been engaged .in municipal and social work, and is the head of the local committee dealing with unemployment relie!. Frau Jankowski says she and her family were awakened early on March 21—-the “day of national exaltation”— by shouts of "Police!” “Open the door!” accompanied by threats to shoot. When she opened the door 14 men in Nazi uniforms and carrying carbines and revolvers entered and searched her flat, and then took her to a Nazi house,

There, in the presence of other Nazis, she was shown the Republican flag and ordered to call it a foul name.

When she refused, the leader ordered “20 strokes,” and men seized ana Stripped her and laid her on a tauie. One held her head while four belabored her with canes and sticks, which assault was repeated four or five times whenever she answered negatively such Questions ns “What does the Welfare Department pay you?” “Why do you harbor Communists?” “Did you steal unemployed people’s shoes?” “Did you prepare a boycott list of Nazi shops?” After at least a hundred blows Frau Jankowski rolled off the table, but was pulled to her feet and struck in the face so violently that she fell heavily, injuring her knee, after which, with two Communists, she was forced to sing “Deutschland Über Alles."