Auckland

Nazi Club In

Some Connections With Samoa

WHEN, late in December, seven Germans were arrested in Auck land and sent to an internment camp, there was broken up a Nazi spy organisa tion which had been operating in the South Seas, with Auckland as head quarters, for a considerable time. The discovery of the organisation was the result of patient investigation.

All the arrested men were members of the Auckland German Club, and Kurt Wilhelm Schmidt, manager of the Pacific Potash Company, who was a leading member of the German Club, was also apparently prominent in the secret or ganisation. Most of the others were men well-known in Auckland business life.

Details are given by the Auckland correspondent of the Sydney “Sunday Telegraph” and he says that evidence has been discovered that Count von Luckner worked in close co-operation with this Pacific Nazi organisation when he visited Auckland a couple of years ago and that he supplied the Auckland Club with much information which he had gathered in the Islands, and left there a young radio expert whom he had brought with him from Germany.

The correspondent says; “During the past couple of years there was a notice able influx of young Samoan women, who settled down in Auckland homes notorious for their pro-Nazi activities. The local German Club took them under its wing, entertained them, and gave them a good time generally. Some of those young women from Samoa found jobs in Auck land; others returned to Samoa; but,

steadily, the Nazi Samoan Club in New Zealand grew in numbers, with head quarters in Auckland.”

The suggestion is that there was a good deal of communication between the active Nazis m Auckland and the young Euronesians of Samoa, who are half German and half Samoan.

The indications are that this organisa tion has now been completely broken up.

T°9 5 1U x l 1 significance should not be attached to the Samoan end of tfte organisation. The active Nazis in Samoa, while active enough, were very few in number, and there is very little Nazi sentiment among the Euronesian people.

Whatever there was, probably existed among young Euronesian women who formed attachments with Nazi Germans living in Auckland and elsewhere Gen erally speaking, the Samoan Euronesians are proud of their German blood, but they have never shown any liking for Nazism. 6 Mr. T. R. Pryor, accounts clerk in the office of the Chief Protector of Aborig ines at Brisbane, has been appointed Protector of Islanders at Thursday Is. and chairman of the Island Industries Board for Torres Strait, replacing Mr. C.

O’Leary, who will return to Brisbane Mr* Pryor was at Thursday Island as re cords and correspondence clerk in the Protector’s office from 1934 until the end of 1938. Mr. O’Leary, who first went to Torres Strait in 1922, has been at T.I. since September, 1936, when he was transferred from Brisbane to deal with some misunderstandings with the natives and his experience in Torres Strait na tive affairs did much to remove the local troubles at the time.