A GERMAN WOMAN’S LETTER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 306, 28 December 1939, Page 8

A GERMAN WOMAN’S LETTER

CONDITIONS Oi LIFE IN THE REICH. The follow ing letter, published in an Eng-lish paper, was written by a woman in Germany to a friend engaged in the underground campaign against the Nazi regime. Although written in the pre-war days it shows clearly the restrictions upon liberty that are suffered by the German people:— We were immensely interested in your long letter. News of that sort we do not get here, though there is something to be gleaned from the foreign papers, says the writer of the letter. We go regularly to the cafe and read English papers. If there is too much in them they are confiscated, but anyhow we get more from them than from our newspapers. Taxes are screwed up and up. Wage agreements are only nominally in force. A new regulation has been issued in my husband’s branch; if he changes his job the new employer must not give him higher pay than he is getting until after six months; nobody cares if he never gets a rise. If workers want to leave armament works or other works where men we scarce, they must go to the Labour Exchange. If they do not get permission there they must stop where they are. And they are told that if they try to get dismissed for bad work it will count as sabotage and they be punished. It seems incredible that a nation should stand it all so long, but I think the German is peculiar in this. So far they have got most in taxes out of the bachelors. My brother-in-law has 68 marks a month deducted from his salary, and then there is the Labour Front and the Winter Aid. And then the indirect taxation through higher prices. Now the childless couples are being taxed. Anyone who has no child after five years must pay higher taxes. An i cnl.er partner can get a divorce on the ground of childlessness.

Babies W.inted. Here is just one example of t he way ■ they are trying to force people to have | babies. A fajnily I know have two i children already. One day a welfare | worker came from the school and i asked the mother whether she would ' not have another child; she would get , an allowance for it. She said no, her ( husband did not earn enough. The. welfare worker replied: “But you are in such good health, • and your children. We have your | case papers. Talk to your husband— ' and then come and be examined, to 1 prove that you are not yet pregnant, for you would not get the allowance retrospectively.” So get the official stamp affixed and then you can go ahead! That is the new moral code. The welfare worker came again. She was told “No” once more. “But what shall I put down? I must give some reason! I will write ‘Not financially in a position.’ ” Now we are all the time in fear of ‘ war, and this dictates everything that is done. There is no leave in the armament works for August, and it L being said here that something is going to happen after the party conference. One after another we all have to go on A.R.P. duly; no notice is taken of a medical certificate. The police send for us and refusal is punished. Yet there is scarcely a shelter in all the blocks of flats; there is no money, of course. The Stale has none ,and where collections have been made they have not brought much in. Everything is scarce, and shoddy and i dear—fabrics, stockings, paper.