CZECHS FIGHT ON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 February 1941, Page 9

CZECHS FIGHT ON

! NAZIS TAKE AND TAKE I FOOD SHORT IN WINTER. ! — EFFECTS OF OCCUPATION. . The plight of the Czech people who | with spartan self-denial are a«kin« American Czechs to send them' no money or packages because of the heavy toll which the German agencies exact there from and who are resisting by silent and sometimes secret methods Germany’s efforts to strin their country of its riches in factories, rood, forests and labour, was described by Mrs Mila Veger, chairman of the Czechoslovakia industrial art group The true story ..f ™ ndu ’o„ s ht Czechoslovakia. Mrs Veger said "is coming gradually to Czechs in she United States, written between the lines in letters from relatives and friends in 'he German-occupied provinces and broadcast clandestinely from secret radios, of which she declared there were thiee opeiating from time to time in Prague. Few Czechs here send any monev over there direct because the German’s would seize a great portion of it.” she said. "Letters received from friends in Czechoslovakia guardedly ask that no food or packages be sent because of the cut which the Germans would take in the transaction. It has , been estimated that German agencies I which operated in the Netherlands be- I tore it was overrun appropriated foijr- 1 fifths of the value in transactions I where money was paid to have packages sent to Czechoslovak territory. *

1 here is very little that persons can do to alleviate conditions inside Czechoslovakia. The work for liberation must be done in the United States or in Britain," she said

Describing the effects of the German occupation as reported bv letter and secret radio. Mrs Veger declared that workers by the tens of thousands had been carried away into the Reich, where they work in factories, on the roads or on farms. With the closing of the Czech universities, she said, thousands of young Czechs were without occupation.

Only the armament factories are working regularly in Czechoslovakia today, and this adds to unemployment hardships. Mrs Veger reported. The Czech sense of humour sometimes makes bearable what might otherwise be a source of friction, she continued, citing the German edict that conductors must call out all motorbus and trolley stops in German before they give the Czech names. This calling out provokes considerable laughter among the passengers, she said.

There is, however, no humour in* the winter food picture, she added, with harvests and fats carried away into the Reich in many instances, and with pigs and chickens registered so that a Gestapo permit is necessary before one of these animals may bo slaughtered. German wounded soldiers have in the recent past been sent to Czech hospitals, possibly to minimise the German population's contact with the war. Mrs Veger continued. At the same lime, reports received tell of German troops being quartered, not in Czech barracks, but in school and university buildings. This, she held, is due to German appuhension lest Czech pilots from Britain bomb the barracks which they know so well.