Buenos Aires.
Hans Wilhelm Wilcke, who has only been in the country a few months, is the organizer and leader of a band which planted bombs and petards in a number of synagogues in Buenos Aires during the past half year.
This discovery was made by the local police in the course of an investigation of an unsuccessful attempt to raid the Comico Theatre when “Races,” a play by Ferdinand Bruckner, a German Jewish playwright, was being performed there.
German Nazis staged a demonstration at the first performance, at which about a hundred Nazis were present. They swarmed upon the stage, wrecked the sets and refused to let the performance continue, on the ground that it was unfavorable to the present regime in Germany.
The police finally arrested sixty-three of the rioters, who with but one exception were German citizens, most of them but a short time in this country. Some of them were members of the crews of German ships which were in the harbor at the time.
German agents carrying on the local Nazi party activities and, it is reported, von Therman, the local German governmental representative, intervened for those arrested. Nazi groups paid the police fines of thirty pesos for each of those seized and after two days’ detention they were all released.
For a while it seemed that the Nazi provocateurs had accomplished their end, for the local mayor forbade the performance of “Races.” But the ban aroused vehement protests among the intellectuals, especially among theatre directors, actors and stage technicians, who threatened a strike.
The mayor, concluding that he had made a mistake, removed the ban on the play, on condition that certain of the sharper speeches and all parts of the action which might possibly offend Nazi personalities be removed.
The play continued, with occasional minor Nazi disturbances peppering the run. One day, before the opening of the performance, the manager of the theatre noticed suspicious looking persons in the vicinity of the theatre. It was soon observed that these individuals had fire-bombs and other inflammatory materials in their possession. Police were called and the suspects arrested. They confessed they had intended to fire the theatre and also disclosed other important information.
They revealed, first of all, that they were unsuspecting laborers whom the German provocateurs were paying a daily wage to carry out all their divers destructive plans. The local Nazis who hired them were, in turn, being paid for their “work” by Hans Wilhelm Wilcke, who was found to be an employe of the local German bank, the Banco Germanico.
The Nazi instigators further revealed they were the ones who in September, 1934, attacked the editorial offices of the Democratic Progressive newspaper, Argentine Tageblatt; planted petards in the synagogues on Uriburu street; bombs in several other synagogues.
All these vandalisms, they admitted, were perpetrated at the command of and with the money supplied by Wilcke. In addition, they raided some thirty-odd meeting halls of radical and Socialist party groups, doing damage in all.
Making an inquiry into Wilcke’s antecedents and activities, the police established that he earned 180 pesos (about $45) a month as an employe of the German bank. He has been in the country only seven months. Immediately upon his arrival he was given work at the bank—which is not often the luck of new arrivals. And after working six months he was given a vacation with pay—a six months’ vacation.
Moreover, it was found, Wilcke had a private office, the rent for which alone must have amounted to about 180 pesos a month, the total of his wages at the bank. And in addition he had funds for the material used in making the bombs and for paying his hirelings.
Wilcke admitted to the police that he was receiving money from German sources, but would not name them. Whether the police will undertake or be permitted to make a strenuous effort to get this information is still a matter of speculation. For there are indications that such an investigation may comprise a number of public figures such as the German government’s representatives here and his attache, Willy Kehn, National Socialist “foreign commissar” for South America. And the line of complicity may even extend all the way through Wilcke’s office here to the propaganda ministry of Herr Goebbels at Berlin.
But one thing is certain: anti-Semitic agitation here is being directed and financed by the Berlin ministry of propaganda through local agents-provocateurs.
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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.
