FITNESS FOR NAZI YOUTH

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 146, 16 March 1939, Page 13

FITNESS FOR NAZI YOUTH

30,000 Doctors To Help

“A YEAR OF DUTY TO HEALTH”

The physical fitness campaign, ordered by the National Youth Leader Baldur von Schirach for German boys and girls, has set in with full force. The current year is proclaimed as “a year of duty to health,” In conjunction with the National Sanitary Board, the National Youth Organization has secured the co-oper-ation of more than 30,000 doctors and women physicians who permanently supervise the health of Germany’s youth. In addition, the leaders of the Hitler Youth are ordered to help make the physical fitness drive a full success. A recent decree stipulates that no adult leader in the Hitler Youth may marry before he obtains the approval of the health authorities that his prospective marriage partner is physically fit. and that there is no hereditary illness in her family. The health of the German boys and girls, organized collectively in the Hitler Youth from 14 to 18 years of age, and in the so-called “Young Folk,” embracing the 10 to 14 year olds, is thus always cared for. Be it at. school, where they are under the supervision of the School Sanitary Board, or camping out in the numerous summer and winter camps organized by the Hitler Youth, or during their stay in one of the thousands of German Youth hostelries, the boys and girls are al_ ways under medical control. Juvenile Crime. For the elder boys and girls abstention from nicotine and alcohol is advised. While no direct ban is placed on these narcotics, the boys and girls are told that it is their duty “to emulate the Fuehrer.” who neither smokes nor drinks. It is also pointed out that smoking and drinking hamper athletic prowess. To give the youths entrusted to them a good example of self-discip-line, the adult Hitler Youth leaders have voluntarily renounced smoking and drinking for this year. Efforts are also being made further to reduce juvenile crime, The fact that in a number of recent eases youths were involved in murder, robbery, blackmail, and incendiarism is seen as proof that severer punishments are required. For this purpose the introduction of penal servitude for juveniles is planned by the Ministry- of Justice. For the lighter cases a special “youth arrest” is proposed which would not be regarded as a regular prison sentence and would not be entered in the papers of the offender. Such a punishment, German legal experts argue, would act as a deterrent to juvenile crime without prejudicing the youthful offender Cor the rest, of his life.