SHOOTING IN PARIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 January 1942, Page 4

SHOOTING IN PARIS

END OF “COLLABORATION.”

SOME EARLIER INCIDENTS. Shooting has begun in Paris. Hostages in tens are being executed, from boys of nineteen to men of seventy-two (“Isidore Bernheim, born February 1, 1869”). Of the first-list of ten hostages shot, five have typically French names and five names that indicate probable Jewish origin. The first shots fired by German firing squads mark the end of “collaboration” accepted willingly—if it ever had any chance of being accepted. The smooth, insinuating German soldier of the early days of occupation had no success with the French. And one can be sure that these latest rifle shots have awakened France as nothing else could. The immediate result of the executions was to increase the number of attempts on the lives of German soldiers. He who has read the history of France knows what to expect, and it is more than probable that the Germans themselves have given the signal by these brutal measures for their own destruction. Patiently and by devious ways, the French will take their revenge. How many German soldiers in France will get back across the Rhine (he day the war machine of Germany falters and then breaks down? That quarter of Paris in which searches and arrests have been frequent of late has in its time seen many scenes of revolt. It was close to the present eleventh ward that the Sans-culoltes came pouring out from every courtyard and doorway, armed with pike and sword and gun, and took the Bastille. It was up the Rue de la Roquette, in this same eleventh ward, where the recent arrests have been made, that the Parisians fought from one barricade to another up to the gates of Pere Lachaise cemetery, and then in the cemetery itself behind the tombstones, against the army of Versailles in 1871. The shots of revolt of the people in 1830 and in 1848 rang loudest iff this part of Paris. “France is unconquerable” says the I London French newspaper “France” commenting on the shooting of hostages. “Stulpnagel has become aware of this. He has realised that his murders of hostages have in no way stopped movement of resistance. Since the ‘ex-; amples’ have not produced the effects < of terror expected of them the German general is going to try collective sanctions. They will have no more effect than these individual executions.”! The Free French Forces have in their turn warned the German oppressor and on September 19 broadcast these words: “We solemnly declare that for every hostage massacred by the invader two Germans will be judged and disposed of by victorious France not two innocent Germans but two Germans convicted of murder or complicity.”