FRENCH WORKERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1943, Page 4

FRENCH WORKERS

EVASION OF RECRUITMENT BY NAZIS. NUMBERS HUNTED IN VAIN. Directors of the large stores of Nice were summoned to a conference. When they arrived each director was handed a list of names of employees and was told they were to be sent off to Germany in 48 hours. One director mentioned they had been called to a conference, and would therefore like to confer together. “Confer about what?” he was asked, “You are here to receive orders, not discuss them.” Some 200 workers were chosen, but more than half of them were missing when the hour camo to report for departure to Germany. In Montpellier, Cahors, Tulle, and other towns, workers whose names were listed for Germany have disappeared. French guards sent after missing men naturally relish their task so little that they do everything so that it will fail, and it is rare indeed that a threatened worker does not receive friendly intimation in time for him to escape. It is because of this that families of such workers are threatened with punishment. Guards along the Swiss and Pyrenees frontiers have been increased. Hide-outs in the mountains are many, and guards sent to search make an amount of noise that is more consistent with giving warning to the hunted than with making the hunt succesful. Also, when a decision is taken to make-searches in a given region it is at once widely advertised, so that workers in hiding can choose another hide-out for the time being. Men who willingly or unwillingly sold themselves to the German service are buying back future forgiveness—or attempting to do so —by giving warning to their countrymen in trouble.