BESTIAL CRUELTY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20083, 1 November 1939, Page 12

BESTIAL CRUELTY

NAZI POLICE METHODS ESCAPED MAN’S STORY Rudolf Gerthen, aged 32, an Austrian, who, having made his escape from a German concentration camp and got liimseif smuggled into the United Kingdom, stood in the dock at the Mansion House, London, charged as an “enemy alien.” He pleaded guilty to landing without permission, but expressed his utter loathing of Germany, declaring that if given the opportunity ire would be prepared to serve Britain in any capacity whatever. Having been harboured for a short time after his landing by a Polish man at Hampstead. Gerthen gave himself up to the City Police. Ho was then .scarred practically from head to foot, and his wrists and ankles were marked by the shackles he said he had worn.

I-Ie described the bestial cruelty he had received in the camp, and instanced as a sample of Nazi irony that, having stated that he (the accused) was by profession a dentist, his teefh were promptly knocked oil*. The Lord Mayor said one could not help feeling sympathy for a man who had undergone what this man had, but he had no alternative to sending him to prison for a month. What was to become of him after that would be decided by the proper authori’y. The prisoner, through an interpreter, expressed the gratitude he felt for the humane treatment he had received since landing in England,