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“how terrible the threats of
princes * * * at the scream of the eagle, people tremble; the senate yields;
the nobility cringes; the judges concur, the clerics keep silent; the lawyers
assent, the laws and constitutions give way, neither right nor religion,
neither justice nor humanity avail.” |
Translated to the Hitler dictatorship, how was it possible that he
succeeded in the highly developed twentieth century to impress his view upon a
great and capable people? Solely in that he based his rule directly upon the
demagogically aroused masses, and created them an organization of watchdogs and
stool pigeons, who little by little became more and more efficient. It was the
army of "small Hitlers" which omnipresent, visibly and invisibly infiltrated
the whole of the public, as well as the private life, sowing distrust and
suspicion among everybody, threatening all those of other opinions in their
personal liberty, and which finally succeeded in smothering every free word.
This was the ever-growing army which served Hitler as an instrument of his
power, he himself being inaccessible and shunning all contact with the
intellectual world, and which gradually brought about those conditions which
Erasmus had pictured so strikingly four centuries ago.
During my
detention in the Preungesheim jail, I wrote a letter dated 26 September 1945,
to my friend Dr. Guenther Frank-Fahle, who was in prison too, in which I drew a
comparison between our life in Preungeshieim with the conditions of life in the
Third Reich, so similar to those existing in the prison.
Frank-Fahle
had been ordered by the chief interrogator, Mr. Ritchin, to deliver to him a
report about our prison life. My letter was attached as an annex to his very
concise report, which, by the way, contains among other facts, the incidents I
recently related here in the witness box. As time does not permit me to read
this letter here in full, I will restrict myself to quoting the following
passage: |
| |
“What would happen to a
prisoner for breaking the prison regulations or obstructing the same? He would
probably soon land in a dungeon on bread and water for extra punishment. What
would happen to a person who would make himself conspicuous in criticizing and
counteracting the Nazi rulers? He would land very soon in one of the ill-famed
concentration camps; just like in prison, he would be found out sooner or
later, because in this doomed country there was not even any privacy left. Nazi
functionaries of all kinds poked their noses into the most intimate, private
affairs, by the help of secretly questioning neighbors, household servants,
employees and so on. Might not this silence imposed upon us in prison be
compared with the silence we had to observe in Nazi Germany toward our wider
surroundings, in our offices, in public places, where you could not dare to use
open language for fear of unknown spies |
1067 |
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