GESTAPO BAFFLED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 October 1942, Page 4

GESTAPO BAFFLED

BY DUTCH UNDERGROUND NEWSPAPER

EDITOR NOW IN NEW YORK. REMARKABLE STORY TOLD. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.10 p.m.) NEW YORK, October 11. The United Press says the Dutch Captain Jon Cornells Hendriks, editor of the anti-Nazi Dutch underground newspaper, “Voorwaarts” (Forward) has arrived in New York after his escape from Holland. He told reporters how the Dutch underground Press was published. “We not only have the Gestapo to fear,” he said, "but also the Dutch Nazis. If we fool them, the others are easy. The printers of official German propaganda also print ‘Voorwaarts’ in an open shop, but the Germans do not know it. ‘Voorwaarts’ was first published 21 months ago and has appeared regularly as a weekly since. All the printers are carefully-sifted members of the anti-Nazi Party. For one issue newsprint was not available. Finally underground workers bought the finest newsprint from corrupt Nazi officials. The editors celebrated by sending two copies of that issue to the German Commissioner, Seyss Inquart. The underground Press publishes news gathered mostly by word of mouth and also excerpts from Allied broadcasts. Further, it exhorts workers to. slow down and encourages sabotage. The size of ‘Voorwaarts’ is from 8 to 16 pagbs and it has a circulation of 60,000. It is dangerously distributed by trucks, trams, bicycles and even by mail. Once the circulation department used a typewriter for addressing mailed copies, whereupon the Gestapo searched for every typewriter in town and eventually found a matching machine and shot the owner. It happened that the machine belonged to a Dutch Nazi, from whom we had borrowed it while he was off prying into our affairs,” Captain Hendriks dryly concluded.