REICHSTAG FIRE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18204, 27 September 1933, Page 7

REICHSTAG FIRE

ACCUSED’S ADMISSIONS THREE OTHER ATTEMPTS QUESTIONS DISALTiOWEP (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Received Sept. 27, noon.) BERLIN, Sept. 20. Bent double across the witness stand, ghastly pale, Van dor Lu-bbe answered questions about throe incendiary tittempts on Berlin buildings on the day of the Reichstag fire. He admitted throwing burning firelighters at the windows of the welfare office at -the City Hall, but the fires were extinguished. Later in tho evening he climbed a scaffolding at the Imperial Palace and unsuccessfully tried to set fire to the building. Asked why, he replied:- “It was my own idea.’’

Dimitrofif -addressed questions to Van der Lubbc which the president disallowed, 'including: “Why are you behaving'so strangely.? Is it because you are weighpd doyn,by the consciousness of the ’tdri-rble crime yoii ‘committed against t lie proletariat ’’ ’ The president abruptly silenced Dimitroff, and withdrew hi-s permission to.put questions on the ground I that he was conducting a' Communist' agitation.

The examining judge and police officers, in order to expedite the proceedings, will testify to-morrow regarding t.lie correctness of Van der Lu-bbe’s alleged confessions, the court accepting this- evidence in lieu of Van dor Lubbc’s- vague replies.

Tho Rhineland authorities warn German travellers that they are liable to imprisonment if they cross the frontier in possession of British newspapers or magazines attacking Germany. German newspapers have been instructed not to publish Torgler’s declaration of innocence textnally, but merely to state that- he proclaimed his innocence without reference to the denial of the Communist Party’s complicity. They must similarly omit the reference to the fact that he was kept five months in chains, which is also officially denied.