“UNDERGROUND” PAPER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 241, 13 October 1942, Page 5

“UNDERGROUND” PAPER

DUTCH ANTI-NAZI PARTY’S OPERATIONS (Recd. 6.30 p.m.) New York, Oct. 11. The United Press says Dutch Captain Jon Cornelis Hendriks, editor of the anti-Nazi Dutch “underground” newspaper Voorwaarts (“Forward”) has arrived in New York after his escape from Holland. He told reporters how the Dutch underground press was published. “We not only have the Gestapo to fear but also the Dutch Nazis. If wc fool them others are easy. The printers of official German propaganda also print Voorwaarts in an open shop, but the Germans do not know it. Voorwaarts was first published 21 months ago and has appeared regularly weekly since. All the printers are carefully sifted members of the anti-Nazi party. For one issue newsprint was not available. Finally underground workers bought the finest newsprint from corrupt Nazi officials. The editors celebrated by sending two copies of that issue to the German commissioner, Seyss Inquart. The underground press publishes news gathered mostly by word of mouth, also excerpts from Allied broadcasts. Further, it exhorts workers to slow down and encourages sabotage. “The size of Voorwaarts is from eight to sixteen pages and its circulation is 60,000. It is dangerously distributed by trucks, trams, and bicycles, and even the mail. “Once the circulation department used the typewriter for addressing mailed copies, whereupon the Gestapo searched every typewriter In the town. Eventually they found a matching machine and shot the owner. It happened that the machine belonged to a Dutch Nazi from whom we had borrowed it while he was off prying into our affairs,” Hendriks drily concluded.