EVENTS IN ALSACE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 July 1941, Page 6

EVENTS IN ALSACE

SYSTEMATIC NAZIFICATION. RIGID MEANS OF SPYING. STRASBOURG, February 2. We are being actively, systematically Nazified, and it is being done in such a way as, it is hoped, to make us feel that any hope of a return to the past is useless. Our names are being changed, both family and Christian names. The new names we are asked to choose, which must be German in character, are inscribed cn our identity cards. Our children must be given German names, and Germaine at home has to be Gertrude in school. Children get marks for telling on each other if heard speaking in French.

Nazi teachers have started right in to teach our boys and girls Nazi principles. They do not look upon us as ever having been other than Germans. Religious instruction has gone by the beard, and now, from the age of ten, they are enrolled in the "Hitler Jugend.” Functionaries who to avoid starvation, have signed up to serve the Germans are sent to Germany for a short stage, there to be trained in German ways. They come back with the information for the private ear of their friends that German efficiency is. a myth and the country is overrun with red tape and good jobs for faithful Nazis. Corruption, they say, is rife everywhere. A rigid system of spying exists in all factories and workshops. An imported Vertrauensmann is placed in every workshop. Nothing can be done without his consent, no man taken on, no man dismissed, no order sent out, He sees that Nazi supporters get thg*r jobs, even if incompetent. Political meetings in the workshops are held, to which all are “invited.” The Nazis have attained one result. Those before the war who admired them—from a distance —now loathe them as much as we all do. and there is a burning hatred of them all that when the day of reckoning comes will be terrible. Don’t think we take it all lying down. For three miles along a wellknown highway every tree was marked with the tricolor colours. Often a French flag is found in the morning flying from a steeple, and although the police have been increased three-fold, the inscriptions “Vive la France, vive de Gaulle!" are numerous. Sisters of Mercy turned out of their convents keep the flame burning in every village of Alsace, and we all know what we have to do. This is being sent via Berlin. The Germans don’t know everything!