You mean you can’t even read the first line?’
ISSUE
“■"WHl*
EDITORIALS
Never Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man
- ■ ---:-And He May Be Wrong
A Chilling Reminder
Hie pages of history are sprinkled
with horror, but none compares with
the deliberate horror of Hitlerian Ger
many; and though today the world is
waking an effort to accept Germans as
asuMthlng less tten the instruments of
so much horror ft is undeniable that a
majority of the people in the Western
World have their thoughts largely con
trolled by those unspeakable German
crimes between 1934 and 1945.
Many Americans honestly support
the political premise that reunification
of Germany is a requisite to European
stability. Most Europeans prefer instabi
lity to the kind of “stability” imposed by
recent excursions of German fanaticism.
A current book, just translated into
English, was written by a boy who was
shot and thrown into a pit near Kiev,
Russia in 1944, and Who miraculously
survived to spend 20 years in research,
tabulating the horrors of the kind of.
“stability” that tiitler’s hordes brought
to that city.
More than 200,000 citizens of Kiev —
most of them Jews, were, slaughtered
and dumped into a single ravine under
the orders of Hitler.
And Hitler recognized that all Poles
were not peasants and he added, "It Is
indispensable to bear in mind that the
Polish gentry must cease to exist; how
ever cruel this may sound, they must be
exterminated wherever they are. There
should be only one master for the
Poles: The Germans. Therefore, all rep
resentatives of the Polish intelligentsia
are to be exterminated." .
And in Russia the proclamation was,
Let us review this most recent chapter
of horror that all too many of us have
chosen to put aside because, perhaps, of
its unpleasantness, and because we don’t
want to believe such crimes possible by
such “civilized” people as the Gentle
Germanfolk.
Hitler said, and his generals carried
out his rule, "The Poles are specially
born for low labor. There can be no
question of improvement for them. It is
necessary to keep the standard of life
low in Poland and it must not be per
mitted to rise. Poland sho,u Id be used by
us merely as a^tou^ of unskilled la
laborers needed by
bor. Every year the
the Reich could be
procured from
•rn hard but just. I will draw ttia vary
last out of this country. I didr not eorrte
to spread Miss. The population must
work, work and work again. Wo are a
master race, which must remember that '
the lowliest German worker is racially
and biologically a thousand times more
valuable than the population here."
And more, 'The Slavs are to work
for us. Insofar as we don't need them,
they may die. Therefore compulsory vac
cination and German health services are
superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is
undesirable. They may use contracep
tives or practice abortion — the more
the better. Education is dangerous. It
is enough that they can count up to
100. Every educated person is a future
enemy. Religion we have to leave them
as a means of diversion. As for food
they won't get anymore than is abso
lutely necessary. We are the masters.
We come first."
And more from a minor murder camp,
Mauthausen, "The 47 American, British
and Dutch officers were led barefooted,
to the quarry. At the bottom of the steps
the guards loaded stones on the backs of
these poor, men ap4 they had to carry
them to the top. The first journey was
made with stones weighing about 60
pounds and accompanied by blows. The
second journey the stones were still
heavier and whenever the poor wretches
sank under the burdens they were kick
ed and hit with bludgeons. In the even
ing 21 bodies were strewn along the
road. The 26 others died the following
morning . . ." This was testimony by a
German eye-witness in the Nuremberg
War Trials.
And a German contractor, working in
the Ukraine told this eye-witness account
of mass murder in the Nuremberg trials:
"My foreman and I went directly to the
pits. I heard rifle shots in quick succes
sion from behind one of the earth
mounds. The people who had got off
the trucks — men, woman arid children
of all ages— had to undress upon the
order of SS men, who. carried dog whips.
They had to put down their clothes in
fixed places, sorted according to the
shoes, top clothing and under clothing.
1 saw a heap of shoes of about 800 to
1,000 pairs, great piles of
and
Iv arouos. Hind mcH other.
SS man, who stood i»
with a whip in his hand. During the 15
minutes that I stood near the pit I hoard
no complaint or pleas for mercy.
"An aid women with snow-white hair
was holding a one year-old child in her
arms and singing to it and tickling It.
The child was cooing with delight. The
parents were looking on with tears in
their eyas. The father was holding the
hand of a boy about 10 years old and
speaking to him softly; the boy was
fighting tears. The father pointed to the
sky, stroked his head and seamed to
explain something to him.
"At that moment the SS man at the
pit shouted something to his comrade.
The latter counted off about 20 persons
and instructed them to go behind the
earth mound. I well remember a girl,
slim and with black hair, who, as she
passed close to me, pointed to herself
and said: 'twenty-three yoars old'.
"I walked around the mound and found
mysalf confronted by a tremendous
grave. People wOre closely wedged to
gether and lying on top of each other so
that only their heads were visible. Near
ly all had blood running over their
shoulders from their heads. Some of the
people were still moving. Some were lift
ing their arms and turning their heads
to show that they were still alive. The
pit was already two-thirds full. I esti
mated that it contained about a thou
sand people. I looked for the man who
did the shooting. He was an SS man, who
sat at the narrow end of the pit, his feet
dangling in the pit. He had a tommy gun
on his knees and was smoking a cigar
et.
"The people, completely naked, went
down tome steps and climbed over the
heads of people lying there to the place
where the SS man directed them. They
lay down in front of the dead or wound
ed; some caressed those who were still
alive and spoke to them in a low voice.
Then I heard a series of shots. . | looked
into the pit and saw that the bodies were
twitching or the heads lying already
motionless on top of the bodies that lay
beneath them. Blood was running from
their necks. The next batch was ap
proaching already. They went down into
the pit, lined themselves up against the
previous victims and were shot. And so
it went batch after batch.
"The next morning I saw about 30
naked people lying near the pit. Some of
them were still alive. Later the Jews still
alive were ordered to throw the corpses
into the pit. Then they themselves had
to lie down in this to be shot in the neck.
I swear before God that this is the abso
lute truth."
Those readers who have stayed with
us this long must be wondering what
we are trying to say, by reprinting eye
witness accounts of this terror.
European Jewry was not the first, nor,
we fear, the last ethnic group to be used
as the catspaw of a demagogue.
There is the V. chilling reminder, in
herent in these terrible pages of history
that even the jmost civilized*; nations
can suffer an epidemic madness that':
can turn upon itself and cofntfLit unim
aginable and unspeakable acts of brutali
ty. - ■* .
If a depression wei-e to hit the United
States in the near future, it would be
easy to inflame the .violent .fringes of
American society into7 blaming Negroes
as Hitler blamed German Jewry, for
every thing that has gone wrong.
You say this is impossible? You say
Americans would not commit such
crimes? You couldn’t be more wrong.
The brutal principles of, dictatorship
place a pistol in the back ‘of each citi
zen’s neck, forcing him to do things
that sicken and corrode his soul, rather
than to suffer that final blast into eterni
ty.
Those who foolishly and recklessly
play with the social and political dyna
mite involved in such affairs are poten
tially much more dangerous than those
generals who play with hydrogen
bombs.
PARAGRAPHS
Bv jack Wider
I have before me a news release from
East Carolina College, which offers, fath
er confused confirmation of the ab
surdity so frequently confronted in mod
em education. Consider this paragraph:
"Award* and recognition* ware given
in tho biological and physical, science
divisions of both, age groups, ten win:
ners and six honorable mention exhibits
were cited in the upper groups Two first,
four second and six third-piece winners
were picked in each division of the jun
ior group." i
Let’s lift that sentence out again:
"Two first, four second and six third
place winners were picked in each di
vision." Everybody wins a prize. There
is a mental block in modern education
which forces the system to confuse the
student, confound the parent and con
sternate those in every department who
are interested in scholastic excellence,
rather than adjustment to the social
living concept.
Grading on curve lifts the low and low
ers the high all too frequently. This sys
tem got started as a real test of student
ability, but it has fallen into disrepair,
and now too often it is used to cover
both the inadequacy of teacher and stu
dent alike.
But let us not forget that schools are
not the only place that this “Every
body A Winner” system is working. In
nearly every segment of society this
levelling concept is operating. Unionism
rewards the sorry worker as 'much as
the excellent worker. Socialism is the
apple that is tempting most of us Adams
and Eves in this 20th Century Garden of
Eden.
The system is that everybody will
have two cars, two chickens in every pot
and a matching pair of Phi Beta Kappa
keys. Which, really, is no more silly
than a science fair passing out “two
firsts, four seconds and six third-place
winners in each division.”
Which is enough of my griping for
one column, let’s talk of more pleasant
things. There were many lost, strayed
and late shoppers for their license plate
in Kinston this year, and among them
was Mrs. Lewis McAvery Jr., who was
told by her husband that they were sell
ing license this year just behind the
Colonial Frozen Food Locker Plant. So
Mrs. McAvery went, and got in line and
inched along patiently, wishing that she
had not waited so late to buy her licen
se.
After inching along for quite some
time she got near the door and then
noticed that people coming out of the
“license plate shop” were carrying box
es of groceries. Nobody had to explain
any further to her, since she then sud
denly realized that she was in the line
where surplus foods are passed out to
welfare department clients. She sudden
ly surrendered her place in the line and
went to |he next building jn the block
where'tth# license-plate lind was slowly
inchhig ^fOhg.'-l bet^Tilrs. M<*Avery is not
the only person who got in the wrong
line.
And I d like to put in a word here
for the best teacher I’ve ever had. Fel
low name of Harvey Hines. He kindly
offered to take me fishing last week
down to Pitchkettle and show me how to
catch hickory shad. We rose up early
in the morning, and after having to bor
row Bill Johnson’s $50 1950 Plymouth
om Fort Barnwell to the fish
Eishing hole there were other
expert shad fishermen, such as Buzz and
Jimmy Mitchell, Bird Nest Rasberry,
Squirrel Miller who all pitched in to
help Hines teach me the fine art of Shad
fishing. My first cast caught a cypress
knee, and Hines explained that I wasn’t
using enough “wrist”. So I used a little
njore “wrist” and got a beautiful bou
quet of Spanish Moss, and so the day
went. The “Master” was not present,
Curly Courtney Humphrey; which I re
gret deeply, for I have seen him
briefly before and know that