Talk:Reuel Lochore

Latest comment: 8 months ago by Muzilon in topic "...Beaten up by German Communists"

"...Beaten up by German Communists"

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The statement that "According to Freya Klier, Lochore's anti-Communism stemmed from an experience of being beaten up by a group of German Communists in 1930" seems to be a questionable WP:SYNTHESIS of the sources. Klier's book says:

Just a few days after his arrival, knowing only a few scraps of German, [Lochore] is caught up in an altercation between National Socialists and Communists, which are common in 1930. He is thronged by an angry mob and does not know what the commotion is all about. A young man approaches him with a leaflet and bystanders warn him not to accept it under any circumstances. When of course he takes it – just out of curiosity – a man turns to him and asks whether he is a Communist. ‘No,’ answers Lochore, ‘I am a foreigner.’ At that, men start pummelling him from all sides. He panics.

Note that Klier's somewhat vague account does not specify whether the pamphlet was a Communist or Nazi pamphlet, nor whether Lochore's attackers were Communists or Nazis. In fact historian Michael King[1] says the men who roughed up Lochore were Nazis. After citing a letter written by Lochore in 1935 complaining that he had been "manhandled by Nazis" in Germany[2], King goes on to quote a radio interview Lochore gave in 1981 describing the "pummelling".[3] It would seem clear from the context that the pamphlet Lochore was given was a Communist pamphlet, and the men who pummelled him were therefore anti-communists, i.e. Nazis. Muzilon (talk) 03:50, 2 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

In the absence of any feedback, I shall remove the sentence in question. Muzilon (talk) 04:32, 9 February 2024 (UTC)Reply