Two hundred Czechoslovakan gendarmes and seventy detectives, conducting an intensive man-hunt for the slayers of Professor Theodor Lessing, noted German-Jewish philosopher who was assassinated at his Marienbad villa Wednesday night, today found one of the revolvers used in the crime and arrested a Nazi party leader in a village near Marienbad on suspicion of aiding Max Eckert, German-born Czechoslovakian citizen, alleged slayer of Professor Lessing, to escape to Germany.
A search of all hotels, restaurants, cafes near the German border was carried on tonight by the police in a rigorous hunt for Eckert’s associates. In one Nazi headquarters they found a note in handwriting concealed behind a Nazi banner, reading “Lessing must die on the 29th of August.”
The revolver was found in a village between Neudorf and Duermaul, not far distant from the frontier, over which Eckert is believed to have escaped. Nazis in Eckert’s village of Schanz, boast impertinently that Eckert is already in Nuremberg, “smoking a cigar at Hitler’s party day.”
Police have little doubt now that Eckert is one of the two men who fired upon Professor Lessing through his bedroom window as he lay sleeping.
The Czechoslovakian cabinet, it is reliably learned, has under consideration a move to declare the Nazi party in Czechoslovakia illegal.
Funeral services for Professor Lessing will be held secretly tomorrow with interment in Marienbad. The body, at the express wish of
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
