Huns Flood Million Acres In Holland

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 95, 23 April 1945, Page 5

Huns Flood Million Acres In Holland

Rec. noon. LONDON, April 22. The full extent of the disastrous flooding of the north-west of the Polder, in Holland, is shown in air photographs, says Reuters correspondent with the Canadian First A.rmy What last week was 50,000 acres of rich farmland is now a great sheet of water, 16ft deep. Not a house or tree can be seen. No living thing could have survived the torrent which swept in from the Zuider Zee last Wednesday when the Germans dynamited the great main dyke. Fifteen thousand Dutch farmers lived in this area, but there is nothing to indicate that the Germans gave them any warning. The Polder, which was won from the sea in 1930, was one of the world's mosi modera. farming com-

munities. The Germans in fifteen minutes wfped out the work of fitteen years. The waters of the Zuider Zee are now back wheie they were in 1930, beating against the old sea wall. The Germans could at any moment loose them over additional hundreds of thousands of acres. The whole of the west of Holland lies at their mercy. They have already submerged one million acres of farmland. A Dutch officer said: "They have put our country back to 1930. They are capable of putting us back to where we were in the year 1000. when the first dykes were built. There are people in our great cities too weak to stand in food queues. Each new flood eliminates additional food-producing areas. Tha feeling of helplessness, frustration and rage is almost unbearable." .