NAZI DEMONSTRATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 February 1939, Page 5

NAZI DEMONSTRATION

IN HEART OF NEW YORK CITY Parade of Grey-Shirted Storm Troopers ISSUE OF ANTI-SEMITISM RAISED RIOTING AROUND MADISON SQUARE GARDEN By Telegraph.—Press Association. —Copyright. NEW YORK. February 20. A crowd of 25,000 jammed every street leading to Madison Square Garden tonight when the German-American Bund held an “Americanisation rally" beneath mingled Swastika and America flags and placards reading “Stop Jewish domination of Christian Americans. Protesting anti-Nazis, many of whom were trampled in the crush, were held back by 1600 police. Two hundred Socialists staged a tenminute riot with 100 patrolmen and drove the police back till mounted reinforcements were rushed up. Fists, banners and batons swung freely. Grey-shirted Storm Troopers paraded within the-building .answering orders in German. The crowd later swelled to 100.000. Rioting broke out all over the Broadway district. The greatest concentration of police in the department’s history fought men and women on the pavements and among jammed traffic. Mounted troopers were constantly moving from place to place breaking up disturbances. Meanwhile 22,000 Nazis within Madison Square Garden demonstrated comparatively without interruption. Patrolmen numbeiing 1745 outside and tear-gas squads on the roof made the building as impregnable as a fortress . However, a man named Greenbaum, who evaded the police and 3000 Storm Troopers, suddenly leaped on to the platform while the Bund leader, Fritz Kuhn ,was speaking and dashed toward the Fuehrer, obviously intending to attack him . He was seized by greyshirted Storm Troopers and kicked and beaten before the police rescud him. He was taken away to the police station while Kuhn continued speaking. Dorothy Thompson, “New York Herald-Tribune” columnist and wife of Sinclair Lewis ,the novelist, was removed after persistently laughing. Police brought her back and placed a guard over the Press section. She explained: “I laughed to prove that free speech is not toleraed in this hall.”