Robert Bernays, member of the House of Commons, writes in the News Chronicle here an ironic account of a visit to a German concentration camp. His guide was the famous Heines, prefect of Breslau, chief of the Nazis of Eastern Germany and hero of the Munich putsch of 1923.
In this camp Bernays saw pacifists, liberals, communists and Jews all nicely tamed down, working at the transformation of a swamp into a municipal swimming pool. When asked what they had to eat they reply with an examplary diet. If they bear marks of brutal treament and inquiries are made about the cause of their injuries, they say, “an accident.” Their evening entertainment is from Hitlerite journals and from Hitler’s speeches over the radio. No one smiles in the entourage of the prefect of Breslau when these humorous details are proffered. Evidently no one realizes that they are humorous. Twenty thousand people, all over Germany, are in such camps, learning their lesson of “Heil Hitler.” The writer finally visited the offices of the prefect of all Silesia. Upon his desk stood the photograph of the five young men who at Ben-then, without authorization, beat a Communist to death. It is ironic that they should be the heroes of the gaoler of the “kindly” concentration camps of Silesia.
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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.
