FLAWLESS ALIBI

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18211, 5 October 1933, Page 5

FLAWLESS ALIBI

REICHSTAG- PRISONER SON’S DRAMATIC STORY LONDON, Sept. 25. “He had chain marks on his wrists,’ said Kurt Torgler, a frank-faced and manly schoolboy, telling the Reichstag Firo Commission” in London of a visit he paid to his father, Ernst Torgler, in Moabit prison (Berlin). Ernst Torgler is the principal accused in the German trial which opens this week.

Kurt Torgler. dressed in sweater arid soft shirt, detailed how Iris father, thinking it unsafe to sleep at home after he learnt of the Reichstag burning, spent the night with a friend, Otto Kuline, secretary of the Reichstag section of the Communist Party. Later, lie "as arrested. ’•We. went to police headquarters, said Kurt. “We couldn’t see him for a fortnight. I last saw him in prison in May when he was thin and depressed. lie' had just been released from his chains.” The doors were locked during the evidence of the above-mentioned Otto Kuhne. He said that five police arrested lnm at his flat the morning after the fire. Torgler was arrested after submitting himself to examination by the head ol the secret service although he provided a flawless alibi. The Nazis, who probably started the fire, did not intend to burn the Reichstag. Witness proved his alibi and was released after several weeks’ imprisonment. Elena Dimitrova, the sister of one oi the Bulgarian prisoners, vividly recounted how her brother was forced to leave Bulgaria. His wife went mad on learning of the present charge against him and later died. ITc was in Munich when the Reichstag was burnt. Another brother was killed in prison. The hearing was adjourned and the findings will be published on Wednesday.