"Your bank account does not show withdrawals sufficient to cover the trip to Germany--"
"Say," he interrupted excitedly as soon as he saw where the question was leading, "when I was called before the Dies Committee, the Congressman there shook hands with me and asked me if I knew anything about un-American activities in the Navy Yard. I told him I didn't and he told me to go back to work 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. Nothing."
The Dies Congressional Committee was not interested in these three men whom they had subpoenaed and then, oddly enough, refused to question. Besides this very strange procedure by a Committee empowered by the Congress to investigate 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 für das Deutschtum im Ausland_ with headquarters in Berlin, letters from the foreign division headquarters in Stuttgart, and from Orgell to Gissibl.
Gissibl was in constant touch with Nazi propaganda headquarters in Germany, receiving instructions and reporting not only on general activities, but especially upon the opening by the Nazis here of schools for children in which Nazi propaganda would be disseminated.
The letters, freely translated, follow. The first is dated October 29, 1937, and was sent by Orgell from his home at Great Kills, S.I.:
Many thanks for your prompt reply. My complaint that one cannot get an answer from Chicago refers to the time prior to May, 1937.
I assume from your writing that it is not opportune any more to deliver further books to the _Arbeitsgemeinschaft_, etc.
The material which Mr. Balderman received came from the V.D.A.[21] It has been sent to our Central Book distributing place (Mirbt). If he wishes he can get more any time; that is, if you recommend it.