Walter Orloff, young Brooklyn Jewish medical student who languished in a Nazi prison at Greifswald for a month before United States consular authorities succeeded in winning his freedom, arrived home Friday on the Hamburg-American liner Hamburg.
A deportee because he had been charged with “high treason” for his alleged Communist sympathies, young Orloff declined to speak to reporters while still under the German flag. On the pier he commented only briefly in answer to persistent interrogation by newspapermen.
Greeted tearfully at the pier by his family, the youth answered their barrage of questions as to his health and experiences as best he could.
“Well, son, it looks as if you were not treated so well in Hitler’s jail,” Henry Orloff, retired Brooklyn real estate man, greeted his son.
“Let’s forget about all that, father,” the son pleaded.
When the United States immigration inspector, who happened to be Jewish, ironically asked the young man whether he intends to return soon to Germany, Orloff replied fervidly, “not as long as Hitler is in power.”
After a few hours with his son, the elder Orloff, in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, declared bitterly that his son was almost “unrecognizable,” and that it was only through repeated questions that he was able to draw any details about his imprisonment from Walter.
“They beat him,” said the father, “they beat him repeatedly. Nazi troopers in uniform with sticks beat him to try and extort a confession
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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.
