PRISON HARDSHIPS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 270, 13 November 1943, Page 4

PRISON HARDSHIPS

MEN IN NAZI HANDS

SOME DREADFUL CONDITIONS

(N.Z.E.F. Official News Service)

CAIRO, Nov. 10.

Comments on the Germans' treatment of their prisoners were made by Major G. H. Thomson, of New Plymouth, a repatriated medical officer, during an interview Describing a railway journey in Greece he said that, travelling from Athens to Hymettus and later to Salonika he and many men were compelled to travel in filthy cattle trucks, each containing 55 men and each completely closed. During this journey they were allowed half a pint of water and a small tin of rations daily, and all the men suffered from dysentery and other ailments. The last lap of this journey lay over the Lamia Pass, and the prisoners were compelled to march 25 miles with full kit—and it was midsummer. Conditions, at the camp at Salonika were dreadful. The barracks were lousy, with little sanitation. After one week Major Thomson volun*A?r el i aS a medic .al officer with 3000 Allied troops, mainly New Zealanders and Australians, who were being transferred to Marburg of Marib ' former Yugoslav town "We formed a lazarette of 150 beds, but beds only in name, comprising wood planks, no bedding and only one .blanket. We endured this for three months. _ "The camp functioned under what !f rh f ? own as f a stalag organisation, which meant that prisoners were detailed for various duties under German control. The Maoris were in the cookhouse and thev were responsible for a wonderful j6b German officers ana men who had met the Maoris on the battlefield rated t?oo?s m ° St dangerous <* all n t^ n * Ma? ? urs town tnere was a Civil hospital, under the control of sisters of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and I had the right to fill 100 beds with serious cases These sisters were absolutely marvellous and I frankly think they saved 90 per cent of lives."