NAZI BRUTALITY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 64, Issue 148, 3 April 1944, Page 6

NAZI BRUTALITY.

NEW ZEALANDER'S EXPERIENCE. RED CROSS RELIEF. The experiences of a. Now Zealand soldier who left with (lie Third Echelon. was captured in Greece, and has only recently been exchanged as prisoner of war, reveal something of the callous brutality of the Nazis, and particularly the inhuman treatment of men in the German prison camps (says the “Evening Post," Wellington). When lie left New Zealand he weighed 14st, he said in an interview, yet at one stage during his imprisonment his weight was lOst 51b. He largely attributes his survival to the Red Cross parcels sent from New Zealand and elsewhere. “The Red Cross people,” he said, “should be told what their parcels meant to us, especially in the camps in Upper Silesia, near the Polish border, and on the River Oder. No British prisoners of war can ever repay what the Red Cross has done for them, because it saved their lives. Their supplies enabled us to retain our self-respect, to keep our heads up, and all the time we were able to look down on the Germans. “In 1043 I do not think that any prisoner in Stalag VIHB missed getting something. They got food, with vitamins in it; in fact, all the Red Cross parcels held solid food, concentrated food, and it really kept the men alive, in spirit as well as in body. I do not know how much the boys collected amongst themselves for the Red Cross, but 1 know that out of 200 of us we gave more than £1000; certainly nobody gave less than £5 to the New Zealand branch of the Red Cross in Egypt."

Kept From Water. On his way to Germany he and his fellow-Ncw Zealanders spent 10 days and nights in cattle trucks. During that period they were let out of the trucks only twice for water supplies, though the truck in which he was held wounded. On these occasions a huge, black, beetle-browed Prussian was at the pump, and tried to prevent him from drawing water, but he persisted, despite occasional blows from a stick. He had then been three days without water, and was suffering from malaria, but kept on pumping to help the others, and succeeded in filling Iwo gallon >. jugs. As a result the stick was busy on him all the way back to the trucks. The Prussian was armed, and itching for him to make an angry move, when he would have been shot. Taken prisoner in the rearguard at Lamia, halfway between Salonika and Athens, he rvas put to work for the German army. They got no meat, except what was surreptitiously given them by the Greeks. Seven months later' he escaped from a prison camp in Germany. When he was caught the Germans held him while others beat him with their rifle butts. He does not remember being taken to hospital. In all he escaped three times.

Treatment in Camp

Reaching Germany in the winter of 1941 the prisoners were without suitable clothes, and no food Was issued unless they went to work. „ They were not given boots, but wooden clogs. At Stalag VIIIB they did not receive Red Cross parcels for three months, owing, he believed, to two ships being lost and to the fact that the railways were busy with military supplies for the Russian front. There were three issues a day and cabbage soup, with a potato put in it once for form’s sake, and occasionally some putrid fish. The bread ration was two small slices. The bread Avas supposed to be 60 per cent, rye and 40 per cent, potatoes, but it contained a considerable proportion of saAvdust, which could easily be detected. Once Ate Cats. “In Salonika Ave ate cats,” said the soldier. “They would have tasted all right if they had been properly cooked, but they were too tough to chew.” Prisoners found the younger Nazitrained Germans much worse than the older men, though he had not found the older men too gentle. “We noticed that, while in 1941 everybody greeted each other with ‘Heil Hitler,’ in the end, and even in 1943, no civilian was to be heard doing it, and least of all” the German working class,” he said. The Neiv Zealander described the massacres of Polish JeAVS and other non-German nationals. He saAv Poles who had been killed in droves taken aAvay in carts. The Russians received the Avorst. treatment Avhen caught. They Avere starved down to as loav as seven and eight stone in Aveight, and brought to the state through malnutrition that they Avere covered in boils and gores, then brutally knocked insensible by rifle butts, but not killed outright.