Crime and Crime

In Kladno, 18 miles northwest of Prague, live Czech coal miners and steel workers.* The town was known in free Czecho-Slovakia as a Communist stronghold and since the German occupation has been the centre of a quiet but effective sabotage campaign against German rule that has everywhere tried the short tempers of the new masters of Bohemia. Bilingual Czech waiters have suddenly "lost" their knowledge of German when waiting on German customers. Czech school children have mimicked the German Army goose step--and grownups have had to pay for the mimicry with jail terms. Czech girls who date German soldiers are ostracized. Delicate machinery, especially in munitions plants, has been mysteriously damaged, and there have been unexplained delays in railroad schedules and slowdowns in factories. As a result, Protector Baron Constantin von Neurath recently went to Berlin to report to Adolf Hitler on the trouble he was having with stubborn, noncooperative Czechs.

One night last week German Police Sergeant Wilhelm Kniest was shot dead in a Kladno street, and the Nazis took advantage of the incident to throw their weight around. (Several days later a Czech policeman was killed at Nachod, 80 miles northeast of Prague. There the Nazis ordered only a "strict inquiry.") An official (German) version of the Kladno killing was that the sergeant was shot by a cowardly, unknown Czech. An unofficial (Czech) version was that he had been shot by another German policeman after a drunken brawl over a girl's favors. In Nachod, Germans claimed the Czech policeman had been killed in a fight between Germans and Czechs. The Czech version was that German police had invaded the Czech police station and had fired at the Czech policeman sitting on his bed.

Whatever the truth, the Nazi machine went into action in Kladno in a big way. Next day virtual martial law was clamped down. Doors and windows of all houses had to be closed between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. Theatres, schools and public halls were closed. The Czech police were mustered in the public square, stripped of their arms and imprisoned for "nonfulfillment of duty." Later they were released and sent to other parts of the country. Heavily armed German patrols roamed the streets with orders to fire^at open windows. Day later, 2,000 reinforcements with machine guns, armored cars and field kitchens deployed in the market place and began-a house-to-house search for the culprit. A reward of 100,000 Czech crowns ($3,330) was offered for information leading to arrest of the killer. One thousand Czechs were arrested; an unnamed nurse, whom Czechs called a "great patriot," was questioned. The Czech mayor of Kladno was supplanted by a German commissar and, to cap it all, the Nazis levied a fine of 500,000 crowns ($16,650) on the district. Most of the money, they added, would be taken from Jews and "followers" of Eduard Benes, former President of Czecho-Slovakia, now in the U. S.

Meanwhile, Nazis held a memorial service in Kladno for Sergeant Kniest, before giving him a martyr's funeral this week in Leipzig, his home city. Adolf Hitler sent a wreath. Kladno was first given 24 hours, later 48, to produce the killer or else suffer "further measures." The Czech Unity Party, only Czech political organization still existent in Bohemia and Moravia, declared such "acts of force are a crime against the entire Czech people," called upon Czechs to cooperate in apprehending the slayer. The Czechs wanted it understood that murder was not in their plans. While Kladno wondered what further punishment was in store for it, in Prague it was feared that the next German move would be to take away what little autonomy the Czechs retained after Adolf Hitler moved in last March.

* Also the birthplace of the late Anton J. Cermak, mayor of Chicago, assassinated in Florida six years ago. There also Czechoslovakia's first and revered President, Thomas G. Masaryk, made his first political speech.

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