NAZIS IN FRANCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1942, Page 4

NAZIS IN FRANCE

HEAVY HAND. BREEDS BITTER HATE DAY TO DAY CRUELTY. HOW THE POPULACE FARES. 1 While much is heard of massacres, unjustifiable shooting, the passing of sentences of long terms of imprisonment, even on women, less has been told of the heartless day-to-day cruelty of the oppressors in France. A recently arrived Frenchman told in a 8.8. C. broadcast, of the petty, galling heart-breaking vexations inflicted by the Nazis on the population of Paris. Before the war, French firemen never saluted officers of the French army, said the speaker. Now, every time they pass a German officer they have to salute. If their salute is not smart, they are marked for punishment. One of the firemen’s most humiliating tasks was the hoisting of the first Nazi flag on the Ministry of Marine. Policemen, who also were not called upon to salute French officers, have to salute every German officer. The control of street traffic, now almost exclusively confined to bicycles, has to be done in jerky true-Prussian fashion. The policemen are made to attend lessons given by Germans, who do not hesitate to insult them at every turn, taking a pleasure in humiliating them. German soldiers delight in having themselves photographed in Paris, the most favoured spot being in the Champs Elysees before the statue of Clemenceau, the political leader of France in the latter stages of the last war. Parisians do not forget the services Clemenceau rendered to his country, and flowers are often placed before the statue in spite of the Germans. Certain cafes are reserved for Germans, one of them close to the Ecole Militaire. The Germans also have their own cinemas. > No French flag is to be seen anywhere. Instead, the Nazi swastika flag flies on every public building. The Germans intend to make lhe Parisians feel that there is no hope, that their beautiful city ig. entirely at the mercy of the invader. German posters appeared everywhere soon after the occupation. They were regularly lacerated by the population. Now they are pasted on the walls seven or eight feet from the ground to avoid this. But the French everywhere stick up their own little signs, most often bearing the motto of the Republic, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” or words equally encouraging. A Parisian found in the streets after the curfew is taken to the nearest police station and made to black boots all night long until five o’clock in the morning, when the Parisians are free to leave their houses. (When Hitler visited the church of the Madeleine he did so before five o’clock in the morning). In their efforts to collect warm clothing for - their troops in Russia the Germans stop Frenchmen as they leave the factories, and those who have leather jackets on have to give them up, receiving in exchange not the third of the price of an ordinary overcoat.