THREE WHO ESCAPED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 314, 29 June 1945, Page 16

THREE WHO ESCAPED

We Talk. Politics With A Spanish Girl and Iwo Dutchmen

A sangre no llega al rio," said Carmen, the Spanish member of the Dutch Women’s Auxiliary Corps, who was in Wellington with two companions, Hans and Pieter, members of the Dutch volunteer force. "That is a saying we have in Spain to mean that the blood never reaches the river,’ she explained. "Although we are always fighting among ourselves, we are friends the next day. because the Spanish are a temperamental, fiery people. That is why no one who has*not lived in Spain can understand our politics." \ All three spoke what most people would call.‘good idiomatic English-it was a change to hear "You're telling me" spoken with a Spanish accentand showed no obvious signs of the suffering they -had all endured under the Nazi regime, which had disrupted Sei individual lives to an extent which is almost incomprehensible to the sheltered New Zealander. They were dressed in ,khaki, Hans and Pieter in the farniliee battledress with khaki berets, and Carmen in a uniform similar to that of our Waacs, but with a black beret. After the outbreak of the Spanish war, Carmen’s family left Spain to live in Switzerland, where she was subsequently matried. Her husband, a Dutchman, escaped the Germans by walking over the Alps to Switzerland with two companions, one of whom had to be dragged the last part of the way because he was unable to walk any further. She and her husband eventually found safety. in England, after they had been through Spain and Portugal. Carmen spoke wistfully of the two-year-old daughter she. had had to leave behind, who was born in Madrid and is now in England. Because of her Dutch husband, who is new serving with the Dutch ‘army in New Guinea, Carmen belongs to the Dutch Women’s Auxiliary Corps as a nurse, although she is Spanish. This auxiliary corps was formed and trained in England, and includes clerical. workers, doctors and chemists as well as nurses, Too Fond of fon to be Fascists Carmen tried to explain the Spanish political situation. The Spanish people, she emphasised, were not Fascists. "They are too fun-loving," she said. "A Fascist government would never hold the Spaniards long, never." She said that the Spanish civil war was bad enough in itself, but was inflamed by the representatives of other ‘nations, who entered Spain to throw in their lot with Franco’s Loyalists or the Republicans. What was, in effect, a family squabble, developed disconcertingly beyond family bounds-and became uncontrollable. One of the troubles was the widespread poverty and _ illiteracy among the majority of the Spanish working class, particularly in the south of Spain, and any of the workers hoped that the ommunist faction in the country would provide them with a better standard of: living,

Herself, Carmen is opposed to the Republicans, whom she calls the "Reds" because, she told us, eleven of her family had been killed by them. She said it was typical of her country’s political situation that although her family were forced to live in Switzerland because the "Reds" walked into their home and took complete charge, they could not return because the Fascists were now in power. The Spanish people’s political outlook was dictated largely by expediency, she admitted. A police agent might approach a peace-loving citizen and enquire his political views. If the citizen gave the wrong answer he was killed. Hence it was wise to have the right answer, whatever one’s fundamental beliefs. . German Aid to Franco The Gérmans gained a hold in Spain, said Carmen, because they provided munitions for Franco during the civil war. Thus, Spain had incurred an enormous war debt and was for¢ed to send money and food to Germany which should have gone to the civil population. Poor people were dying in the streets because the rations they were told they would receive were nonexistent. Without money to buy ,from the black market, a flourishing concern in Spain, as in all European countries, they starved. Now the situation is that unless young people are members of the Fascist youth organisations they find it difficult to obtain work. Spanish citizens must give the Fascist salute, but most of them do so with the left hand, which is very far from indicating respect for Nazism. People are afraid to express their views because they have no knowledge of who will betray them. Yet in spite of all this, Carmen maintained that Franco had done good work in keeping Spain neutral under difficult conditions, From a Spanish Prison Her views on conditions in her country were supported by Hans, who had spent some time in a Spanish prison, after managing to. cross the Spanish. frontier in an attempt to escape from occupied Holland to England. He had been captured because he had no authorisation papers. The conditions in the Spanish prisons were terrible, he said. Men were crielly put to death under the slightest pretext. ; ' This was the second occasion on which Hans had entered Spain. The first time — he had gone through Free France, which, : he said, was more dangerous territory. than occupied France because at every failway station there were German guards. who demanded to see authorisation papers. The food was so poor in Spain, and he became so weak, that he went back to Switzerland to recuperate before returning to Spain and being thrown into prison. 3 "After five months in prison, he was released through the help of the Dutch — Consul, and then for the following eight months he waited ‘in’ Madrid for his papers to come through to allow him entry into England, When he arrived (continued on next page) )

(continued from previous page) there in January of last year he joined the Air Force, and after a course lasting eight months. volunteered for Netherlands East Indies service. He is married to an English girl, who has also joined the Dutch women’s Auxiliary Corps. Escape from Germany Pieter, the third member of the trio, was a press photographer in Amsterdam, expecting to go to London to represent his firm, when the Germans occupied Holland in 1940. He refused to work in accordance with Nazi doctrines and resigned. He explained that the only way for anyone to escape being sent to Germany for forced labour was to disappear completely by changing one’s name and working on a farm. He said that there had been a strong underground movement in Holland but, since there were no hills which would serve as hiding places, it had been different in character from the partisan armies in some other countries, and had found its strength chiefly in sabotage and the transmission of information to the Allies. Accordingly, Pieter worked on a farm in the south of Holland for a year under an assumed name. However, the Germans then captured him and he was taken to the south of Germany to a ptison-camp, where he stayed for ten days. It was then mid-winter, January of 1944, with stormy weather, which enabled Pieter and some companions to escape one night on a raft across the Rhine, The raft was anchored with steel cables, which they cut, and then used boards taken from their beds as oars. With the current against them and the fierce storm, it took them three-quarters of an hour to cross the Rhine into Switzerland. Even then they were not safe, because unless they managed to reach a locality four miles from the border, the Swiss police would have arrested them and handed them back to the Germans. By crawling past the police, then walking along the roads as though they had every right as Swiss citizens to do so, Pieter and his companions reached a place called Aarau, where they reported to the police. They were then despatched to England with the help of the Dutch Government. Nazi Brutality All three were emphatic that the British people had no real knowledge of the German character because they did not realise what living in an occupied country meant. They were united in

their loathing of the Nazi regime and wére convinced that democracy was the right form of government. In Spain, said Carmen, the people were anti-Russian, but supporters of Great Britain and the United States in spite of the Fascist rule. Pieter estimated that the proGerman Fascist movement in Holland never included more than one per cent of the population. All their national interests, said he and Hans, were tied up with those of Great Britain and. the United States. Before they left, the trio were once more insistent that the full extent of Germans’ bestiality had not been understood by the British. The experience of all three had proved that although the Germans began their occupation of conquered countries with an attempt to ingratiate themselves, they soon revealed themselves as completely brutal. All three hastened to give instances of what they had seen the Germans do to show their arrogant might. Yet their spirits were high in spite of all that they had suffered, and indicated why the Germans failed in the occupied countries. es