No Law in Reich, Only Nazi Will, Whim

Special Correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency who has just returned from an investigation of Nazi Germany

More disastrous than the shattering of non-Nazi business, more cruel than imprisonment, torture, and death for Nazi political enemies, and more serious than any phase of the National Socialist rule of Germany today is the absolute lack of legality in all parts of the Third Reich.

A short seven months ago Adolf Hitler in being inducted as Chancellor of Germany laid his left hand on the Bible, raised his right hand to his God, and swore to uphold the Constitution and law of the German people. Seven months have passed; and today Germany flounders in a state of perplexity, absolutely without laws to guide the destiny of the state and fully dependent upon the whims of politicians for the security of business interests, safety of person, and immunity from attacks of lawless elements.

The Weimar Constitution, promulgated in 1919, reads: “All Germans are equal before the law. Men and women have fundamentally the same rights and duties. Public advantages or disadvantages of birth or rank are to be suspended.”

LESSON OF ZUCHTHAUS

A few weeks ago I walked through the Sonnenburg Zuchthaus, a large political prison gradually being filled with German citizens who have committed no criminal offense, who have created no breach of the peace, and who have been neither charged, tried, nor sentenced. Many of the prisoners did not know why they were there. The reason, briefly, for their incarceration was that they are not National Socialist in political creed.

On the wall of the Communist leader Kaspar’s cell was pasted an excerpt from the Weimar Constitution. Kaspar, once a member of the Reichstag, and still arrogantly defensive of his rights, has no objection to visitors reading the proclamation: “Article 130 — The officials of the German Reich are servants of the whole community, not a party. To all officials, freedom of their political beliefs and right of association is assured.”

Through the steel corridors of the Zuchthaus we passed, occasionally halting to talk with the unfortunate, entirely unhappy, sallow faced men, who leaped to attention and saluted my Nazi escorts. Here was the trembling little Mosiefsky, editor of a Berlin weekly whose principle policy was to bring about peace and understanding between nations. His lips quivered and tears came to his eyes as he referred to “those happy, peaceful days before the war.” The Nazis told us that his sole offense against the state had been his pacifist nature.

Banding in sullen, melancholy groups in the “recreation yard,” their gait expressive of the despondency of utterly hopeless men, formerly celebrated political leaders and professional men shuffled like fettered sheep. A burly brownshirt guard stood nearby with rifle slung over his shoulder. Frequent attempts to escape had been thwarted by this rifle; and, according to released prisoners, a number of those who had not attempted to escape had been shot “escaping” nevertheless.

My companion, Mr. Ben Riley, formerly a Labor member of the British Parliament, asked that a certain prisoner be allowed to talk with him. In a few moments the prisoner was brought before us. Although a strong man of not at all delicate sensitivities, this prisoner cried as he told us of his wife and six children being without support during his imprisonment. He stated that he was in prison probably because Nazi competitors would benefit by the closing of his business. Our Nazi escorts admitted that many prisoners in the Zuchthaus were innocent even of infidelity toward the Nazi regime—they were there merely because business rivals had complained, and the absence of formal trial had made impossible even a simulation of investigation into their alleged political offenses. Jews, especially, were admitted to have come under this category.

In the dining room men listlessly played games. Jews appeared to favor chess, while others occupied themselves at cards and simpler forms of amusement. The prisoners were passing indefinite terms at these games. It had been announced that a number of these men would be “permanent” guests.

INSIDE WALLS, OUTSIDE LAW

Outside the walls of the prison, police, guardians of whatever law still exists in Germany, stood; inside law-abiding citizens were kept, poorly fed, worked, tortured (as a narration by a released prisoner later revealed), and shot by the reigning party who acted quite outside the law of the country.

Article 112 of the Weimar Constitution: “Every citizen has the right to emigrate to countries outside of Germany.” Today, to leave Germany it is necessary to obtain consent of Nazi administrators of the state. Thousands of terrorstricken Jews, willing to surrender their property to Germany for permission to leave, are too afraid to ask this simple license. A group of sixty Jewish doctors in Berlin seeking to go abroad two months ago, were apprehended when they sent queries to foreign cities asking information on the possibility of their resuming their profession abroad. One of them told me that a number of them had been beaten and insulted while in the custody of police during their four day detention, and upon their release they had been forced to sign documents stating that they had not been harmed. (A number of doctors called to treat victims of brownshirt brutality have frequently told me that signing similar medical reports, usually stating that the patient had fallen downstairs, was compulsory and promise of a death penalty given if the true facts of the cases were ever divulged.)

Article 115 — (Weimar Constitution) “The home of every German is his place of refuge and can not be violated.” Although efforts have been made to forbid brownshirts from illegally entering homes, hundreds of arrests are still being made by stormtroopers without warrants who invade the sanctity of the home. S. A. Leader Obernitz (Nuremberg) told me that in arresting 160 Jews last July many were taken from their breakfast tables.

WHAT THE LAW SAYS

Article 117 — “Secrecy of letters and of postal, telegraphic, and telephone service can not be impaired.” In their newspapers Nazis boast of the manner in which they uncover plans in the mails for the export of money from Germany. A score of foreign correspondents in Berlin have reported that their telegraphic dispatches have been held up, distorted, or stopped entirely, while telephone communications abroad are infrequently interfered with. Nazi secret police in Berlin admitted that seldom is a telephone call made without being overheard by one of their battery of secret operators.

Article 123 — “All Germans have the right to gather in meetings peaceably and unarmed without announcement or particular permission.” No non-Nazi political or social gathering may meet without Nazi permission, and, if the gathering discusses topics unfavorable to the administration, it is almost certain to be broken up and those attending thrown into concentration camps. Synagogue services have been interrupted and worshippers clubbed by brownshirts.

And so on down the line. The Weimar Constitution provides for freedom of speech (I have seen a Jew arrested by stormtroopers while police looked on in a Kurfurstendamm cafe for disagreeing with the Nazi attitude toward the Catholic Church), of press (all non-Nazi newspapers have either been closed or “gleichgeschaltet”, and even foreign correspondents may not report news as they see fit), of art (all scenarios, novels, plays, and even paintings must pass the censorship of the Nazi propaganda ministry before they can be placed before the public.)

OTHER VIOLATIONS

All citizens without distinction are to be admitted to public office, according to the constitution, and yet Jews and non-Nazis are being cast out of office as quickly as possible. Freedom of thought is granted; yet on the German Protestant churches the hakenkreuz is as prominent as the cross of Calvary. Property is safeguarded; yet it has been taken away from most Jews living outside Germany.

The German streets are not red with blood. They are not even a pale pink. If the transfer of power in Germany has really been a revolution, it has been a reformation in revolutions as far as the shedding of blood goes. Considering, however, the terror, the uncertainty, the hopelessness of the people of lawless Germany, the revolution has been quite as severe as the French or Russian.