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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 14, Issue 9 (December 1, 1939)

Examination of Luggage

Examination of Luggage.

In the last month we have crossed the German frontier four times and our luggage and personal effects were searched only once—and that was on our first entry from Denmark towards Hamburg. The Nazi officers, in their smart uniforms, were satisfied with a superficial search, but there happened to be in that Customs Office a plain-clothes gentleman—very rare in German officialdom. We had reason to believe that he was a member of the Gestapo. Our British passports were taken to an inner room for about ten minutes and the plain-clothes man started in on our luggage. I had been collecting technical information from the Scandinavian countries about railway problems, and in my bags were some blue prints and other technical information. These he seemed to find interesting. Then we all had a fair amount of private correspondence and this was carefully scrutinised. No one in the place seemed to be able to speak more than a word or two of English and I should not imagine that this man could read it. No doubt he had his orders to look at everything—and was doing it. Several times we were asked our professions. There were three of us, a lawyer, a banker and an electrical engineer—and the information was in our passports.

Perhaps they thought that if we were asked often enough we would say we were spies!

In one of the bags was a copy of the journal of the New Zealand Presbyterian Bible-class movement and in this was a photograph of the last Easter camp held in Hunua, near Auckland. The rows of tents caught the official's eye and he studied the photograph for some time and then gave it up with a shrug of the shoulders. Finally, we were allowed to proceed on our way. It had not occurred to these smart fellows that we had a luggage compartment behind the back seat. The bags in it were not disturbed—not that we would have minded!

(Rly. Publicity photo.) The noble facade of the new railway station at Wellington, New Zealand.

(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The noble facade of the new railway station at Wellington, New Zealand.