GERMAN REFUGEES FLEEING WESTWARD

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 269, 12 November 1943, Page 3

GERMAN REFUGEES FLEEING WESTWARD

EVACUATING UKRAINE Rumanian Trains Stormed By Colonists N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 10.30 a.m. LONDON, Nov. 10. All German civilians in the Ukraine and unspecified parts of Poland have been ordered to evacuate westward, says the Berlin correspondent of the Stockholm newspaper Social Demokraten. Masses of refugees, fleeing westward, have been seen at Lwow and Cracow, also at Minsk in White Russia. Because of the impossibility of carrying out evacuation by railway —all German transport in Russia has been mobilised for military use —the settlers have been told to find their own way back. They must trek back to Germany on foot if they cannot find transport. As they retreat westward across Russia, the Germans are driving thousands of Russian civilians before them. The German News Agency says Soviet troops in Russia are advancing into a vacuum because villages and towns have been emptied of their civilian populations. The news agency adds that German plans to evacuate wide stretches of countryside were made long ago. Reuters correspondent in Zurich says, panic-stricken by the Russian advance, the people of Bessarabia are in headlong flight from their homes. Roads are crammed with all kinds of vehicles, while trains to Rumania are literally stormed, chiefly by colonists who settled in the province after the Germans and Rumanians captured it in 1941.