"On the roadway of Bahnhofstrasse, men have been posted here and there,
who stop passers-by from time to time and order them to shout "Heil" forthe "Führer". No one would think of not complying. This little routine
is repeated every three or four minutes". Madeleine Jacob, who had
already witnessed the victory of the reactionary forces against the
socialists and communists in Vienna in 1934, describes the atmosphere
after the "Saar plebiscite" confirming its attachment to Germany, now
governed by the Nazis.
The advance of the Nazis in Mitteleuropa during the 1930s, announcing
the policy of annexation and the violence of the regime, was documented
by many witnesses. Among these witnesses, several journalists. It is
these reports and testimonies, coming from the left, that Anne Mathieu
is interested in in a book that is as much a work for memory as a plea
for the profession of reporter, of which the author notes that she
"occupies a significant place among her colleagues, sometimes even a
central place".
These are therefore militant and/or committed reporters - the author
having restricted herself to studying only a corpus of newspapers and
magazines from the left or the far left - that we will follow from the
borders of the East or the West, to Prague, Vienna, Berlin and all the
way to Alsace. These people bear witness from the point of view of the
street, of the cafés, to the inexorable rise of Nazism in Europe.
How could we claim that we did not know, when so many testimonies
already recounted the systemic violence of Nazism, the fear of
opponents, the distress of refugees? The photo on the front page of the
weekly Regards showing a young refugee child, sitting on a bundle, his
gaze clearly tense with the subtitle "Are all our children safe" seems
so premonitory that it is frightening.
Its topicality is also frightening, reminding us that yesterday as today
the testimony of reporters in areas of tension and conflict is a
political issue, silencing them is already an act of war.
David (UCL Savoies)
Anne Mathieu, Sur les routes du poison nazi. Reporters et reportrices de
l'Anschluss à Munich, Editions Syllepse, 2024, 220 pages, 18 euros.
https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Anne-Mathieu-Sur-les-routes-du-poison-nazi-Reporters-et-reportrices-de-l
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