The following article, “The Brown Terror,” is the first of a series written by Miss Thompson (in private life Mrs. Sinclair Lewis) by special arrangement. Subsequent articles will follow in the Jewish Daily Bulletin. Miss Thompson served as foreign correspondent for many years, with the Curtis-Martin Newspapers, Inc., for which she “covered” Europe from 1920 to 1928. During 1924-28 she was stationed at Berlin as chief of the Central ###pean Service of those newspapers. She is the author of “The New Russia” and “I Saw Hitler.”
First of all, it must be said, it must be re-iterated, that there has been and still is a widespread terror, which extends throughout the whole of Germany, and which has been, and still is, accompanied by individual atrocities. The German government has sought to minimize the terror in several ways: first, by denying outright that it exists. On the twenty-fifth of last month, for instance, Mr. Hitler’s personal press attache, Herr Hanfstaengel, gave an interview, in the Chancellor’s name, to an important American news agency, in which he stated categorically that 1) “all reports of the violent mistreatment of Jews, without exception, are base lies”, 2) “there have been a few unavoidable clashes between small groups of political opponents, and in these clashes no distinction has been made between Jews and non-Jews,” 3) that “no difference in treatment is made between supporters and opponents of the government” and 4) that “anybody guilty of such mistreatments” — in the course of political clashes — “will be punished.”
These statements of a responsible government to an American news agency were all untrue. I have no reserve in saying this bluntly. Jews, quasi-Jews, have been violently mishandled; the so-called clashes between political opponents have consisted in armed S.A. or S.S. Storm Troops of the Nazis breaking into private houses and dragging helpless individual victims to places where they can be mistreated; every conceivable difference in civil rights is made between supporters and non-supporters of the government; and persons guilty of acts of individual violence cannot be punished because it has become a crime in Germany to discuss such acts, and extremely dangerous to report them.
NAZIS JUSTIFY “NECESSARY REPRISALS”
The present German government agrees with Emerson, that “consistency is a hobgoblin of little minds.” Having first of all categorically denied that there were any “atrocities” whatsoever, the government, through its most responsible agents, Herr Hitler and Herr Goering, afterward admitted them, but described them as “necessary reprisals” or “occasional acts of over-enthusiasm.”
The government’s second means of “combatting the atrocity propaganda” — as all reports of acts of violence in Germany are invariably called — has been blackmail. The one day boycott on April 1st was the most blatant evidence of this blackmail. The total Jewish population of Germany were made responsible for reports for which both serious foreign correspondents and sensational headline writers were answerable. But the government’s blackmail did not end there. The government attempted to have removed from office as presi-
dent of the Association of Foreign Correspondents, Edgar Mowrer, the correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, a man whose whole crime consists in definitely disliking the course which German political life has taken since Stresemann. The government called in responsible leaders of the socialist party, and of German Jewry, and gave them to understand that either they would use all their energy to cause public statements to be made abroad denying the atrocities, or the government could not be responsible for what the Storm Troops might do.
DENIALS OF ATROCITY AT PISTOL-POINT
It will remain forever debatable whether it is in the interest of any group to sacrifice, for the lives and comfort of its members, its moral position. German Socialists and German Jewry did sacrifice their moral position. They joined in the chorus that everything was orderly and quiet in Germany. Suddenly, from various points in Europe, statements appeared, from German Socialists and leading German Jews regretting the atrocity propaganda. The statements were not worth the paper they were written on or the air they were spoken over. They were statements made at a pistol point—and the pistol was not pointed at the speakers but at their followers. The statements were in the nature of recantations made for the welfare of others. They were made in conviction that thereby German Socialists and Jews were being spared a further blood bath. And perhaps, to an extent, that was true.
There remains, therefore, a single agency in Germany, which has so far not been intimidated in telling the truth, and that is the corps of foreign correspondents. By a vote of sixty to seven they refused to remove their president on the threat of being boycotted in obtaining news and despite the censorship, and despite the fact that their telephones are watched, they continue to give as true a picture as they can of what is actually going on in Germany.
IMPRISONED FOR REPEATING NEWS
But, of course, nobody knows the truth. Nobody knows whether it is actually a fact that the floggings and beatings which were certainly common in the last days of March and early days of April have actually abated, as they seem to have done. Specific case information has to be obtained under the most oppressive difficulties. It is now a crime in Germany, punishable by as much as a year in prison, for anyone to spread stories of acts of violence by Brown Shirts and reports of arrests have repeatedly appeared in the Berlin press. People have been arrested and condemned to months in prison for repeating stories which have appeared in foreign newspapers under the signatures of thoroughly reliable correspondents. Germans have been arrested for saying that they did not think that the Communists set fire to the Reichstag—a belief which is shared by nearly every foreign correspondent in Germany. Under these circumstances, the objective investigator is everywhere regarded as an enemy, as a menace from whom to flee.
Nevertheless, the following statement can be made in regard to “atrocities”. I have every reason to believe that it is a moderate statement, and well within the bounds of fact:
Scores, and perhaps hundreds, of people have died in Germany as the result of the Brown Terror.
Hundreds, and perhaps thousands have suffered serious and extremely painful injuries, from the results of which they may never wholly recover.
Tens of thousands have been thrown into prison or into concentration camps for activities which are no crime at all under the constitution to which the present government took its oath.
That thousands more, and in particular thousands of Jews have been deprived of their means of existence is another question which I shall deal with in other articles. Here we are talking exclusively of acts of violence.
How many people have been done to death?
A Swedish news agency reported something over 230 deaths from violence since March 5th. A government statement, answering this, said that it was a “ridiculous exaggeration” and that a truer number would be about a tenth of that sum. I do not know how either the Swedish agency or the government compiled their figures, but I do know that a foreign journalist who took the trouble to cut out every death notice which appeared in the German press since March 5th where death was clearly attributable either to suicide because of humiliation at being dismissed from posts—such as the suicides of several Jewish judges early in April—or to injuries suffered in encounters with police or Brown Shirts—counted over a hundred.
HOSPITAL CHIEF’S EVASION
It must be made clear under what conditions people who are injured are treated. I went to a hospital in the South German town of X—where I had reason to believe there were patients who had suffered from Nazi violence. I made no previous appointment; I did not even know the name of the head physician. I depended upon my card and my husband’s name—usually a sesame to physicians, since “Arrowsmith”—to get me an audience. I was first received by two assistants in the surgical ward. I explained my errand and also added that I was aware of the situation in Germany and realized that the greatest discretion was necessary. The physicians who received me were courteous but explained that my request for information was a matter which would have to be referred to the Head Physician. He in turn received me in his private office, and in answer to my questions made the following statement:
“I cannot answer any questions at all, of the nature of yours. I can only say that if you will bring from the German government a pass permitting you to visit the wards, I will let you visit them.”
In answer to my question: “Will you say that you have received in this hospital no victims of Nazi violence?” he answered, “I will say nothing at all.” In answer to my request to see the sick-charts of the patients in open wards, he again refused, saying firmly, “I can give you no information whatsoever.”
I left the hospital and had walked two or three blocks when I was approached by a young man, out of breath from running, who asked me for my address and said he would come to see me, in connection with the matter I had been discussing in the hospital. When I asked him how he knew about the matter at all, he said that one of the assistants who first talked with me had informed him.
TRUTH-TELLING INTERNE LOSES POST
He showed up at the place where I was living next day and made a statement. He said that he had been an interne in the hospital in question but had been dismissed, because when cases were brought into the ward where he was working, he had followed a formula, until the revolution, in practice in all German hospitals, of making a detailed report of the case, including the testimony of the patient as to how his wounds had been received. It has always been the practice in Germany for physicians to make protocolls of cases of assault and it has been their duty to report such cases to the police. My informant said that he entered upon the charts the information that the patients had “been attacked by uniformed men”. He never used the words “Storm Troops” or “Brown Shirts”. He was afterward informed by the Hospital Chief that he should have reported each case merely as “accident”. “Do you want the hospital to be closed?” he had been asked. He left his position as a result, and has since left Germany altogether. It is therefore clear that patients received into hospitals with wounds inflicted by Storm Troopers are being listed as accident cases, and if they die, they are not murdered, but simply die of injuries received due to accident—or of heart failure, as one notorious case, that of Dr. Neumann, is known to have been reported. Dr. Neumann died after a gruelling torture which ended with pepper being rubbed into his wounds, but the official report said that his heart failed, as, indeed, it did.
My informant from a single hospital told me that the surgical ward in which he worked had received fifteen cases, after turning away many more as not serious enough to require hospital treatment. He said that all of them were Jews, and that all of them claimed they had never been active in politics. Their acts of provocation had sometimes consisted of bumping against a Brown Shirted S. A. man, going into a restaurant door, or not immediately answering a provoking “Hail Hitler!” For such offenses they had been taken to Nazi “head-quarters”—to one of the numerous dwellings existing in all cities for this purpose—and there had been beaten.
BEATEN WITH STEEL STAFFS
One of the fifteen patients had become insane. Most of them had been terribly beaten about the head. In one case he feared for the loss of the patient’s eyes. Most of them had had to undergo from an hour’s to an hour and a half’s punishment. The instruments used were, according to the patients’ testimony, steel staffs. Certainly some hard and sharp instrument had been used, because most of them had split open heads. One had been stuck several times through the arm with a dagger, and one had been partially strangled and then released. None of the attacks had proved fatal when the physician left the hospital.
How many such cases have occurred in Germany?
I have said: Certainly hundreds and perhaps thousands.
At the foreign consulates and embassies alone there are 170 protocolled cases of Jews who have been molested, mishandled, or seriously assaulted. These cases have all been filed with the German government. Other agencies, which I am not permitted to name, hove protocolled cases of German Jews, Socialists and Communists, and have also filed them with the government. The agencies which have done this are very difficult for a reporter to approach; they fear that the slightest publicity may make their work impossible in the future. Nevertheless, I have had the opportunity to see, outside of these agencies, the protocolls of over 200 cases. There, then, are 370 cases in the city of Berlin alone, which I, as an independent journalist, have information about. Certainly I have not obtained information about all. And there is no reason whatsoever to believe that Berlin is peculiarly vicious. On the contrary, the best information which I was able to obtain was that the worst and most frequent cases occurred in Silesia, Saxony, Brunswick, and the Pfalz.
VICTIMS COMPELLED TO BEAT VICTIMS
Here are some typical cases. In each case I reserve the name and address and other facts which are in my possession. My reason for so doing is fear that I may involve persons from whom I had information, or persons closely connected with the injured or the deceased.
On …….. (date) there died in………. hospital Dr. Blank. He was an attorney who had defended Republican leaders in court processes. Dr. Blank had been taken, a week before his death, together with his brother, to a Nazi headquarters. (In the protocol before me the address appears). He found there numerous other victims. They were all badly mishandled. One group of the victims were obliged to beat the others, while Nazis threatened them with revolvers. Dr. Blank’s head was shaved, and the Hackenkreuz was branded upon his head and upon his face, with a red-hot metal. He was later delivered to …….. hospital, where he died as the result of his
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
