WILLKIE DOUBTS TALE OF NAZIS ON FAMILY But Is Glad to Know His Words THE NEW YOR NAZIS CITE RECORDS Reach the German People IN REPLY TO WILLKIE war. If China is to be saved, with our help, from Japanese and Axis control, Wendell L. Willkie yesterday char- its embattled leaders will have to settle Give Their Version of Emigra- acterized as "incredible" the state- ment of the German Ministry of their present dispute peaceably. tion of Candidate's Ancestors Propaganda that his grandfather By Telephone to THE NEW YORK TIMES. had left Germany because his fam- GRANDFATHER WILLCKE BERLIN, March The state- ily had been swindled by one Ber- Herr Goebbels recently attempted to ment by Wendell L. Wilkie that his nard Gerson, a Jew. cast doubt upon Mr. Willkie's state- grandparents fled Germany ninety In a prepared statement Mr. years ago to escape political repres- Willkie said: ment that his grandfather left Ger- sion is now countered in detail by "While I was in England the many because he could not stand the German quarters on the basis of the British Broadcasting Corporation at political oppression. According to the records of Aschersleben, the town my request broadcast a message Goebbels version, Grandfather Willcke in the Hartz Mountains where they from me, as an American of Ger- sailed from Hamburg on Aug. 14, 1860. lived before their emigration. man ancestry, to the German peo- This date alone seems in the eyes of German quarters state that Mr. ple. I told the people of Germany Willkie's grandfather left Germany that Americans of German descent the Nazi Minister to prove that the mo- rejected and hated the aggression tives for the emigration could not have in 1860, more than ten years after the 1848 revolution, not because of and lust for power of the present been political. Apparently Herr Goeb- political oppression, but because he German Government. bels believes that the political con- "I feel much gratified that this had been deprived of his inherit- message apparently reached the ditions in Prussia in those days were ance, a copper smithy, which his German people and has caused Mr. perfect, that the subjects of the King mother sold to a Jew, Bernard Ger- [Joseph] Goebbels [German Propa- enjoyed every opportunity and that son. ganda Minister] such disturbance. they had nothing to complain of The Aschersleben records show, It is encouraging to learn that the it is asserted, that Mr. Willkie's truth is gradually getting through. The Nazis are poor historians, other- grandfather emigrated alone and There must be millions of liberty- wise they would recall that the political sent for his wife and two sons only loving people in Germany who are outlook in Prussia in those days was after he had been in the United presently unwillingly enslaved by States five years. the Nazis. Those were the ones I quite dark-in any case, dark enough According to the Aschersleben was attempting to and apparently to make the friends of liberty despair records, it is stated, Mr. Will- did reach. of the future. The reigning King was kie's eat-grandfather Friedrich "I am, of course, amused and flat- Willcke, settled there in 1823 as a tered that I worried Mr. Goebbels. hopelessly insane. Since Oct. 7, 1858, coppersmith. On Jan. 22, 1826, his Any American could be proud of his brother and presumptive heir had son, Joseph Wilhelm Willcke, grand- having Mr. Goebbels as an enemy. ruled in his place as Regent. This father of the Presidential candidate, I am distressed, however, that in was born. He married on Nov. 6, an attempt to offset my message Prince-Regent, later William I, was a 1854, Matilde Breitschuh, who bore he invented such a highly imagina- strong opponent of democratic institu- him two sons, one of them Wendell tive story as the Gerson one with tions. In the revolution of 1848 he Willkie's father. its appeal to prejudice against the In 1859, Friedrich Willcke made Jewish people. I never heard of the was the commander of the Royal Body a will in which he provided that story and to me it is incredible. Guard. Public opinion made him re- the coppersmithy might be sold "I do not pretend to have devoted sponsible for the bloodshed in Berlin without the consent of his children. any time to studying family history. This clause, it is asserted, was used If the talk I heard as a boy at of March 18, 1848, and gave him the by Herr Gerson to purchase the cop- home is correct my grandfather nickname "Cartridge Prince." When persmithy from the widow after came to the United States in 1848 the revolution went farther, he was Friedrich Willcke's death. as a result of the democratic revo- When his father died on June 29, lutions of that year, later returned forced to flee and spend some months 1859, Joseph Willcke decided, there- to Germany for a few years, mar- as a refugee in England. With the turn fore, to emigrate. It is asserted that ried and then returned to the of the tide he came back and com- he sailed from Hamburg on the United States in 1860, where he Hamburg-America steamer Bavaria lived until he died. These things I manded the Prussian forces that ruth- on Aug. 14, 1860. know only generally by family tra- lessly suppressed the democratic and The coppersmithy, it is stated, dition. republican movements in the Palatinate was finally passed into Herr Ger- "I do know as facts, however, son's hand on July 25, 1861, and that my grandfather taught my and in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Frau Willcke, who had to carry the father a deep and abiding hatred of The situation in those years was cost of the transferring of owner- German autocracy and militarism, very similar to that in England in the ship, had only a monthly payment a passionate love of liberty and a of 7 2-3 thalers to show for it. warm and sympathetic understand- days when Charles I tried to restrict ing of the problems of the Jewish the powers of his Parliament. There people and of all minority groups, were political persecutions, imprison- am proud that my father taught those same doctrines to his chil- ments, suppression of newspapers, and dren, and I am firmly convinced, books. Such were the conditions in despite Mr. Goebbels, that millions Germany in the years when, according of Germans enslaved by Hitler still cling to those beliefs." to Dr. Goebbels's version, Joseph Wil- helm Willcke emigrated. In any case, he did not emigrate from an earthly paradise or from a land of opportunity.