GESTAPO IN PARIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 March 1942, Page 4

GESTAPO IN PARIS

SUPERVISION AT MANY POINTS. AGENTS PROVOCATEURS. The Gestapo in Paris and how it works is told in a document just issued in London by the Free French forces headquarters. “The Gestapo has its seat at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, at the Quai d’Orsay,” says the report. “The favourite meeting-place for its agents is a night club called La Petite Chaise, at the corner of the rue St. Guillaume and the rue de Grenelle, near the Ecole des Sciences Politiques. The club is closely watched and swarms with agents provocateurs of both sexes.

“People arrested by the Gestapo are usually questioned in a large building surrounded by a garden in the Avenue Foch, Bois de Boulogne. At all hours of the day and night German cars are parked in front of the house. Another part of the Gestapo services is installed in Claridge’s Hotel, on the Avenue des Champs Elysees. “The various German services established in Paris are subjected to strict supervision by the Gestapo. In this way, since last August officials belonging to these services have received orders not to mix with the French population. At the same time, about a hundred Gestapo agents arrived in Paris, where they proceeded to purge the German ranks. Several hundred officers who were leading a gay life were transferred elsewhere. All bars and public places frequented by German officers and officials are closely watched. “The chief places of amusement, such as the ‘Lido,’ ‘Sheherazade,’ the ‘Cremailliere,’ ‘Cloche d’Or,’ etc., are under the strict supervision of plain-clothes agents, who insist on seeing the identity cards of the staff in order to compare them with the staff list which must be kept by every establishment. “The agents provocateurs, both men and women, often call themselves Austrians, Alsatians oi' Czechs, and pretend they also are victims of Germany. German officers and officials receive instructions as to the subjects they should broach when talking to the French. Every week they are told what they should say on each particular question. “The principal prisons used by the Gestapo are the Sante and Fresnes. Executions ’take place in the prison of Fresnes. An important French manufacturer was taken there after arrest and executed the same night. A fortnight later it was announced that he had hanged himself in his cell. “The Gestapo also has its ramifications in unoccupied France. The two principal hotels in Marseilles are swarming with agents. The chief of the Gestapo in the south of France is a man named Hans Lekart, who lives in Aix-en-Provence.”