Underground Press Books
Stir Memories
 

Editor's Notk,: //; January the Libraries placed on exhibit a substantial
part of the collection of illegal press publications which ivere presented
by Mr. and Mrs. Valerien Lada-Mocarski. After seeing the examples
of books published in Nazi-occupied Holland, Dr. Benjamin Hun¬
ningher, Queen Wilhelmina Professor at Columbia, inas moved to
write to Roland Baughman the letter which, with Dr. Hunvingher's
permission, is printed below.

Dear Mr. Bauohman:

I want to tell you how deeply your exhibition on the resistance
press in western Europe has moved me. 1 suddenly found myself
facing another part of my life which is as far from our Columbia
existence as one planet from the other. I really never would have
expected to find these publications here and certainly not that
translation of Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down, De Vliegenvanger,
which means in Dutch: The Flypaper. We used this publication
for our Actor's Fund. In 1942 the Germans ordered all rhe artists
to register with the Kultur-Kammer. Those who refused were
not allowed to continue working. For the actors who did not
sign up (about 40 per cent) we had set up a fund from which
we could pay them a small basic income. \Mien it appeared that
we had no money left, one of the actors translated the Steinbeck
book, which by one way or another had been smuggled into the
country and we had it printed in an edition limited to one thou¬
sand copies. We sold each copy for a minimum of 100 guilders,
which was at that time for us more or less the equivalent of ,?ioo
here. Everything went extremely well and the proceeds helped
us through some difficult months. Later on, however, the printer
was caught by the Germans while printing some other resistance
material, and was shot.