The German-American Bund is training children to foment unrest in schools by raising questions about race and religion, it was charged today before a subcommittee of the special house committee to investigate Un-American Activities by Roy B. Monahan, a veterans’ leader.
The children are given instruction at Bund camps in how to bring up racial issues in their school rooms, Mr. Monahan declared. He quoted Theodor Dinkelacker, national youth leader of the Bund, as saying: “Our youth are destined to carry forth our Nazi ideals.”
A widespread effort at espionage and subversive activities by Nazi groups in the United States, with Bundesfuehrer Fritz Kuhn as a “potential Konrad Henlein,” was described by Mr. Monahan, who is a lawyer, State commander of the Disabled American Veterans of the World War, chairman of the National Americanism Committee of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a member of the American Legion.
It is the duty of civic organizations to assist in exposing un-American movements, one of the most dangerous of which is the Bund, Mr. Monahan asserted. He quoted Mr. Dinkelacker as stating: “Anyone of German blood who would renounce his German fatherland after becoming an American citizen would be a despicable scoundrel.”
Children in Bund camps are used for construction work and other heavy manual labor to save the cost of union labor, Mr. Monahan charged. Last year parents of the children complained about this and were threatened with ostracism if they did not submit, he said.
Calling Kuhn a “potential Konrad Henlein,” the veterans’ leader asserted that there was evidence that Kuhn was a member of the group responsible for Hitler’s “beer-hall putsch” in Munich in 1923. Mr. Monahan cited the similarity of uniforms as indication that the Bund was part of a world-wide movement.
The Nucleus of a unit of the Gestapo, German secret police, has been established here, Mr. Monahan declared. The intelligence service was organized on Feb. 3, 1937, he said, at a meeting in Kuhn’s office at which 61 persons were present and at which time it was decided that the organization would be masked as a clipping and news service, but would serve as a Gestapo adjunct. The organization is called “Bunaste” and is headed by Otto Wegener, Mr. Monahan said. He identified Dr. Friedhelm Drager, German Vice-Consul in New York, as the Gestapo agent here.
Mr. Monahan accused the Bund of using its membership as strike-breakers to aid employers who were members, citing a strike at the Krug Baking co. in Jamaica, L.I., and a strike at the Cushman bakeries some time ago as instances in which the Bund provided strike-breakers. He also asserted that there was a definite connection between the Bund and William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts of America.
The Bund, He said, has also organized groups of people who are sympathetic to it, including one in which provision is made for members using aliases.
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.
