NAZI BARBARISM

Hokitika Guardian, 15 September 1933, Page 8

NAZI BARBARISM

“CONVERTING” GERMAN JEWS LONDON, September 11. How the Nazis “convert” the inmates of internment camps is- described bv a correspondent who recently visited Germany ;and inspected a camp in which 2500 men are kept in a disused factory that is surrounded by barbed and electrical wire. The Governor explained that the length of incarceration depended on a prisoner’s change of heart. When the correspondent suggested that conversion under pressure would l->e useless, the governor replied that -a prisoner was not released until after three months’ probation, during which Nazi spies reported on his informal and intimate conversation while his weekly letters home were censored and his relatives watched, -as a “converted” prisoner could not he returned to an /anti-N a A (environment. The governor said tlia-t 40 per cent of the prisoners were -at present in the process of conversion. Twenty per cent were still uncertain and 20 per cent were not sufficiently intelligent to hold political views. Athough many were of humble origin, the prisoners of all ages complained of the totally inadequate food, which comprised mostly potatoes ana coarse bread. They added that parcels which their friends sent were robbed of delicacies, and that they wore forced to work when unfit. Several showed badly marked hacks, as the result of floggings.