AVALANCHE VICTIM

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 287, 2 September 1942, Page 6

AVALANCHE VICTIM

Once In Concentration Camp

Dominion Special Service. CHRISTCHURCH, September 1.

Heinrich Susmann, the Austrian skiing instructor, who was killed in an avalanche on the slopes of Mount Cassidy, near the Temple Hut, in Canterbury, last week, came to New Zealand three years ago. He was a doctor of law in Vienna and was on the staff of an anti-Nazi newspaper. When the Nazis occupied Austria, the staff of the paper was arrested, the manager was shot, and Susinaim, with others, was thrown into a concentration camp. He was an inmate of the camp for about, a year. He would not speak of his experiences in the camp, except to say that one year in the camp had taken two years off his life. Through the efforts of his friends in New Zealand, Susmann was successful in having his wife brought to this country from India. She had been interned there as an alien and joined her husband in New Zealand about-lit months ago. She is also from Vienna, and is a doctor.

Susmann was a resident of Dunedin and was engaged, by the Christchurch Ski Club to act as coach to a party of members and friends from other clubs spending the school holidays at the Temple Hut. Mr. G. G. Lockwood, secretary of the Christchurch Ski Club, said that this was the first fatal accident in the history of New Zealand ski-ing, and the first one connected with an avalanche.