SHELTERED FROM NAZIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1943, Page 5

SHELTERED FROM NAZIS

DUTCH STUDENTS AND SOLDIERS. GERMANS THREATEN FARMERS. London cables recently revealed that the Nazis in Holland are still fulminating against Dutch farmers. Dire measures are threatened and frequently taken against the farmers for the mildest of misdemeanours. Thus, four strawberry growers were sent to a concentration camp for selling strawberries privately instead of allowing the Germans to confiscate the bulk for their own consumption in Germany. Other strawberry growers were compelled to erect notices forbidding entrance to their strawberry fields. One of the Nazi leaders fumed and fretted in public against what he said is “a well-known fact that certain farmers provided food and lodgings for all those who have gone underground. They give them sham jobs, thus acting against all strict orders of legal authority against such practices, and do so not without danger to themselves.” He declared that all such farmers when caught would have their farms confiscated. In Frieseland, especially, he went on to say, the farms were getting more and more crowded with farm labourers who know nothing about farm work and often speak in an Amsterdam dialect. The explanation is that these bogus farm labourers are Dutch students and soldiers who refused to respond to the call-up for deportation to Germany and have gone underground. In some districts there are four farm labourers to every ten square yards of farm land. In the course of his address he quoted a letter he had received from the wife of a German thatcher in Holland who complained that she had reported a farmer to the police who was regularly selling milk direct to the civilian population. The result was that the Dutch police, instead of arresting the farmer and suppressing the trade, went and bought milk from the farmers themselves