Freedom Writers

Stories from

          Luxembourg

          Czechoslovakia

          China

He was a miner. He was, too, immensely proud of the thousand years of history of his country — proud also that the Grand Duchy, though one of the smallest states in Europe, was the seventh largest steel-producing country in the world.

When on May 10, 1940, the Nazis forced their way across the frontier he shared the fury of his fellow-citizens. Both peasants and miners alike hated the Germans. They wanted to be free. They wanted to remain loyal to their sovereign, to their democratic form of government. He joined, therefore, a secret patriotic movement, swearing never to give up the fight until either the day when his country was free again or the day when he met his death.

Adolphe Claud will never see a free Luxembourg, for he was executed on February 10, 1942. He was accused of organizing Luxembourg resistance against the Germans and of being one of the authors of the following letter:

His face was round and rosy, his eyes blue and kind, and he had a winning smile which charmed not only his friends, but even those criminals who were arrested by him. He was proud of his medals and belonged to the patriotic Legionaries Organization. On national holidays he displayed his old uniform and decorations, marching through Prague behind the flag of the Czech Legion. When he passed the corner of Wenceslas Square and Nation Street he smiled to the second floor of the house at the corner where his wife and son were sitting at the window, and waved to them happily and satisfied. These were his happiest days.

The days of Munich came. The nation mourned, and little groups stood all over the town during that night when the final decision fell in Bavaria. Josef Skalda stood among them with tears in his eyes. “Never mind,” he said. “Don't lose confidence in yourselves. Bitter times will come, but they'll never stamp us out. They can't shoot all of us.”

Bitter times came. Nazi hordes swept into Czecho-Slovakia. The peaceful streets of beautiful Prague were grey with Nazi uniforms; Czech songs were drowned by the noise of the tanks patrolling the town. The whip of the Nazis lashed the air, shots were fired, cries of martyred students rose to the sky. But “they could not stamp them out” ; as Skalda had said, “they could not shoot them all.”

Skalda's son, who studied science at the university, belonged to those who were rounded up by the Gestapo on November 17, 1939. Josef Skalda went to the Gestapo headquarters in Petschek Palais, in the Bredovska Ulice. “Where is my son?” he asked. “Give me my son back. He hasn't done anything; he is just a boy.” A Gestapo official shouted at him the answer, “Your son is safe where he belongs, and if you pester us any longer you will be arrested yourself.” The father went sadly down Bredovska Ulice, but he was not thinking about his son any longer. He was thinking about the horrified faces of those patriots whom he had seen delivered by lorries to the headquarters, and he was still feeling the cold shower which ran down his neck when he heard the cries of the tortured in the building. He knew that all the people who were delivered to headquarters were put with their faces against the wall and left there for about three hours. Those who moved or showed any signs of life were pressed with the butt of a rifle against the wall so that their noses started to bleed. They had time during these three hours to look upon the many bloody spots on the wall which told of the many sufferers who had been there before them. During these three hours they heard the moaning of those who were ‘questioned’ on the second floor. Some of those who had to wait were forced to sit in an Oriental position and were threatened by the Gestapo guard with shooting if they moved. An old rabbi who could not stand it any longer and who fell on one side was shot in the middle of his head. When, after three hours of nerve-wracking waiting, these people faced the questioner they were so broken in spirit that many of them were easy prey for the gallant representative of the Herrenvolk.

About all this Josef Skalda thought when he went down the street. His wife was waiting for him at home with an anxious look in her eyes. “What about Jirka?” she said, and her voice trembled. “What have they done to him?” “Well, mamimko,” he said, “they told me he is all right, and we'll have him soon with us again.” But he was staring out of the window, and she knew that he wasn't speaking the truth.

The Skaldas did not hear again from their son. Rumour reached them, however, that he had been taken from the dormitory that night to the airfield of Ruzin. There he had been stripped and forced to run round the airfield during an ice-cold night, and when his lungs simply couldn't stand it any longer he had been beaten and beaten again. When he fainted cold water was thrown over him. Nothing more was heard of Jirka; whether he died that night or whether he was taken “for further examination” to a concentration camp was never known. Mrs Skalda grieved over the fate of her son so much that she neither ate nor slept, and one day when her husband returned home he found her dead on the bed, a picture of her son clasped in her hand.

That night Josef Skalda walked along the streets of Prague, and he passed the spot where he once said, during that night of Munich, “Never mind. Don't lose confidence in yourselves. Bitter times will come, but they'll never stamp us out. They can't shoot all of us.” And that night Josef Skalda knew he had a mission. “We must not lose confidence in ourselves. That's it,” he thought. “The whole nation must be told that, and they must be told that there is hope for us.”

He decided to issue a newspaper which would inform his fellow countrymen about the real things happening in the world. A paper which would tell them the truth, and not the ordered Nazi views which the official Press under German control was compelled to print.

The old policeman in him, with all his knowledge of underground methods, was stirred. He set out to collect contributors for his paper. In taverns, coffeehouses, and in the flats of people he knew would act as real patriots, he organized his 'editorial' staff! He seemed to know everybody and everything. A duplicating machine appeared from somewhere, paper sufficient for a whole edition was suddenly stored in his cellar, articles flew through the open window. He knew how to find people who tirelessly turned the handle of the duplicating machine day and night and how to find others who risked their lives distributing the paper into every corner of the country. Newspapermen on the street corners cried the names of the German-controlled Press, but if you winked in the right way you got an issue of the illegal paper folded in your copy. Housewives lifting their doormats found the news-sheet underneath, people opening directories in telephone boxes, menus in restaurants, or programmes in theatres or cinemas found Skalda's printed messages. Old lorries laden with beer barrels bumped through the streets. There was, however, no beer, but illegal papers in the barrels. Bulky bundles of German papers were piled in the luggage vans of the trains crossing the country. They were thrown off at certain spots in the dark, dense Czech forests to be picked up later. Apart from their cover, however, they contained the illegal paper.

In the beginning the contributions consisted of articles discussing the situation and exposed the lies of the German propagandists. When, however, the Czech broadcasts from London began the importance of the illegal paper grew tremendously.

Now, not only messages but actual news could be distributed. The increase of material became such that actually several papers had to be produced. There was the R.C.S. (Republika Cesko-slovenska), I.S.N.O. (Information Service of the National Liberation), and, most famous of them all, V Boj (On with the Fight).

The difficulties under which Skalda and his collaborators worked cannot be overestimated. Every careless word or incautious action might mean death. Skalda based his organization on the 'cell' system. The members did not know each other, so that should one be arrested the work would go on. As a special precaution every number was printed in a different place, which meant that the bulky duplicating machine had to be transferred each time. The numbers appeared at regular intervals varying from a week to a month. Gradually local papers were organized in many parts of the country which eased the distribution.

It can now be revealed that one of the prominent victims of Heydrich's butchery had also been one of the contributors to Skalda's papers. This was Dr Karel Treybal, President of Court in the town of Velvary, the world-famous chess master. His name was known to everybody who loves chess; it also ought to be known to everybody who loves democracy and freedom. He was executed because a Czech arms and ammunition store was found in the cellar of the Court building of which he was in charge. He left a wife and two small children.

Treybal's death was a hard blow to Skalda. On the eve of the execution he arrived late at night in the flat of one of his collaborators, who afterwards managed to escape to Great Britain and who told me the story. Skalda was deeply moved and disclosed for the first time that Treybal had been a member of his organization. They sat at the open window, for the night was warm and mellow. “Karel has gone now,” he said finally. “God help us all.” And then he added, as if saying a special prayer, “And especially Samal. I have just spoken to his wife and it has broken my heart.”

He then told his comrade what he had heard about the Chancellor of the Republic, Dr Premysl Samal, who had been arrested by the Gestapo and who was compelled, in a concentration camp, to sew buttons on German tropical uniforms. Every day the number increased, and in the evening he received a blow on his head for every button he was not able to sew. He, the highly educated man who was one of Masaryk's collaborators during the liberation of Czecho-Slovakia in the last war, finally became so distraught that his poor tortured brain could think only of buttons. His wife had tried for months to obtain permission to visit him. When she was finally allowed to see him for a few minutes he could only speak of buttons and how many he was able to sew. When she left him he still said “Knofliky, knofliky” (“Buttons, buttons” ). Chancellor Samal died in his seventy-first year, tortured to death.

When the Germans started their drive on Russia they were especially concerned with the fighting of sabotage in the Protectorate in Bohemia and Moravia — not only because that country contains a high percentage of their war production, but because some of the most important lines of communication cross this territory and are especially vulnerable to sabotage. Threats from Germany and investigations did not help in the least, and the Nazis took particular trouble in discovering who was responsible for the illegal Press in Czecho-Slovakia as they quite correctly considered it as a most dangerous manifestation of resistance which had to be broken at any price.

Finally Heydrich, the butcher, arrived, with a special staff of Gestapo bloodhounds. Work became more and more difficult for Skalda. One day they found out and arrested him and some of his collaborators.

Josef Skalda knew that it was his end. But he also knew that his work would go on. When they arrested him he smiled sadly. One of the Gestapo men beat his face, shouting, “Don't laugh, you schweinhund.” Blood was running down his chin when Skalda answered, “I don't need my blood any longer, but there will be revenge for every drop.” He received a blow on his head with the butt of a rifle and fell to the ground. He was so beaten during the ‘investigation’ which followed that when he was tried at the People's Court in Berlin he could hardly be recognized by his friends who were tried with him. Josef Skalda was sentenced to death, and sentences of from five years to life imprisonment were imposed on his helpers. The judge who pronounced the sentence asked Skalda whether he wanted to say anything. He answered, “You have taken my son, my wife, and now you are taking myself. But you cannot take the whole nation, and you ...” “Enough,” cried the judge, and a Gestapo guard silenced the prisoner by a blow in his back.

But Josef Skalda, the hero of Czech liberation, the martyr for a free Press, smiled. He knew his work would continue long after the shots that rang out one early morning in his Berlin prison as the autumn leaves of October 1941 fell in the parks and fields and lanes of Czecho-Slovakia.

Ostensibly there are no direct relations between the Japanese authorities in occupation and their Chinese hireling gangsters. When a crime had been committed they would pretend to conduct an investigation to deceive the outer world, particularly in cases when the persons and interests of foreign nationals were affected. They let the puppet traitors do the dirty work for them and saved soiling their own hands withal.

Kidnappings, assassinations, bomb outrages, sabotage, and other crimes are the daily rations of the Chinese patriots and loyal citizens, who, in spite of repeated threats and warnings, continue with their passive resistance against the national enemy and vehemently — frequently not without touches of subtle humour and irony — denounce and condemn the puppet regimes.

In September 1940 the Cheng Yen Pao, a new American daily, appeared. The same day a mysterious unknown bought the entire issue for the day at the retail price. The first issue never reached the public. Two executives of the famous Shun Pao in Shanghai disappeared mysteriously in succession. Bombs appeared in the printing press, typesetting rooms, book-shelves, libraries, and other unsuspected corners. The patriots, too, sometimes have their day. Once in the columns of the China Daily News, organ of the Wang Ching-Wei puppet regime in Shanghai, there appeared the advertisement of a notorious gambling house, but printed on its fringes in the smallest type also appeared the words “Down with the Wang Ching-Wei traitor regime.” The same advertisement appeared next day in a more attractive get-up, but outside the office of the Editorial Department was a notice tendering the deepest apology and asking for punishment while, as usual, the blame is laid at the door of the ‘Communists’ .

Chu Hsin Kong, the writer of the letter reproduced below, was the literary editor of the Ta Mei Wan Pao (Chinese edition of the Shanghai Mercury). To protect their interests the proprietors of the newspaper transferred their right of ownership to American friends and registered it with the authorities as an American concern. This courageous daily, in spite of threats and assassinations, bombings and sabotage, gallantly carried on with its anti-Wang denunciation and anti-Japanese campaign, as also the Shun Pao and others. The general manager of the Ta Mei Wan Pao, Samuel Chang, and the heads of the Advertising Department were assassinated. Another editor was shot and seriously wounded. In fact, they were put on the death list by the gangsters, as also were other patriotic and loyal journalists and foreign correspondents. Among the latter who shared that honour is Hallett Abend, China correspondent of the New York Times, who was forced to flee from China. These brave souls lived from day to day with the sword of Damocles, suspended by a dangerously thin thread, hanging precariously over them. Chu is a martyr. His thoughts and courage express the soul and spirit of every Chinese patriot who, irrespective of party, belief, and creed, lays down his or her life, or is still fighting on for national salvation and freedom.

This is the letter :—

Two days after the letter was published Chu Hsin Kong was assassinated