Germany Abusing Postal Rights; Seen As Threat Against Privacy

That Germany is abusing rights granted by the international postal agreement was the opinion expressed yesterday by members of the foreign mail department of the main post office.

Inquiries regarding censorship practices in Hitler’s Third Reich disclosed that the German postal system is straining the postal code in an effort to read private correspondence. A letter, opened by German censors and re-sealed in Bremen, was turned over to the United States postal authorities as evidence of an undeclared mail censorship in Germany.

The letter, mailed from Bremen and addressed to New York City, was sent as first class mail. When the letter arrived in New York it had been slit lengthwise. Across the slit were pasted four stamps, stating that it had been opened by foreign exchange authorities for inspection.

INTERNATIONAL LAW VIOLATED

According to postal employees here, it is neither customary nor legal to open mail unless it is suspected of containing unmailable matter such as firearms, inflammable articles, indecent matter, dunning postals, lottery tickets, endless chain correspondence or fraud matter, or merchandise which is taxable by the Customs House and is undeclared. The nature of the letter submitted to the post office yesterday precluded reasonable possibility of its falling into any of the above categories. It was a small letter easily able to pass with minimum postal charges for first class foreign mail.

It was addressed in ink, by a private party of no particular distinction, to an undistinguished American. The note it bore was of a friendly nature, and could not be interpreted as containing adverse criticism of the German government. The size of the letter and its texture negated argument that it might carry merchandise.

The German practice of opening mail without having declared publicly the existence of a censorship is considered in many quarters not only an offense against international postal ethics and a violation of postal codes, but also a supreme Hitlerite threat against the liberties of private persons residing in Germany.

ADMIT OPENING MAIL

During the year Hitler has been in power Nazi authorities have openly admitted that they have opened mail to discover who among the German people were unfriendly toward the government.

Arrests, the number of which can be reckoned only by the few officials who are in charge of Hitler’s undeclared censorship, have been consummated time without number as the result of governmental prying into private correspondence. It is believed that thousands have been thrown into concentration camp after Nazi censors had detected critical statements against the government or regarding present conditions in Germany.

In July, 1933, approximately sixty Jewish doctors were detained for three days or longer in concentration camps, brown houses and prisons, after Nazi consors had discovered them applying for information regarding the possibilities of earning a livelihood in England and other foreign countries. A number of them were beaten by their captors during their period of detention, and when they were released, they remained on probation for a long time.

Not only has mail been tampered with by Nazi censors, but all communications, which include telephone conversations, telegraph and cable messages and the radio, are subject to severe censorship in Germany. News correspondents in Berlin have reported that their dispatches had been tampered with.