THE
DIES
149
COMMITTEE SUPPRESSES EVIDENCE
"What bank?"
don t know, it s some place on Church Avenue."
have about 2,400 dollars in the bank, a nice apartment,
I
"Oh,
"You
and you and your wife went on a trip to Germany last year.
Did you save all that money in so short a time on wages of
forty dollars a
week?"
He
shrugged his shoulders.
"Your bank account does not show withdrawals
sufficient to
cover the trip to Germany"
he interrupted excitedly as soon as he saw where the
before the Dies Com
question was leading, "when I was called
the Congressman there shook hands with me and asked
mittee,
"Say,"
me
if I
Yard.
knew anything about un-American activities in the Navy
him I didn t and he told me to go back to wor
I told
and not to say anything about having Been called before them.
Now I do not understand why you ask me all these questions.
The Congressman told me not to talk and I am saying nothing
more.
The
Nothing."
Dies Congressional Committee was not
interested
in
men whom they had subpoenaed and then, oddly
refused to question. Besides this very strange proce
enough,
dure by a Committee empowered by the Congress to investigate
these three
subversive activities, the Dies
Committee withheld
for
months
documentary evidence of Nazi activities in this country directed
from Germany. The Committee obtained letters to Guenther
Orgell and Peter Gissibl, but quietly placed them in their files
without telling anyone about the existence of these documents.
They did not subpoena or question the men involved.
The
letters the
Committee treated
so cavalierly are
from E. A.
Vennekohl in charge of the foreign division of the Volksbund fur
das Deutschtum im Ausland with headquarters in Berlin, letters