BADLY TREATED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 152, 29 June 1945, Page 5

BADLY TREATED

BY SOVIET SOLDIERY

Australian Prisoner Of War

Allegations

Rec. 12.30 p.m

SYDNEY, this day.

Hatred, suspicion, neglect and illtreatment by the Russians were the lot of the Australians who escaped from German prison camps into Russia, said Gunner Vivian Cox, formerly of the A.I.F. Third Tank Attack Regiment, in a Sydney Morning Herald interview published today. Cox has returned to Australia by way of Odessa after spending four years as a prisoners of war.

He was two months in Russia after escaping from a prisoner of war camp in Poland. Throughout that period he was confined with others in filthy quarters under armed guard. Hundreds of British, Americans and Australians were eight days in overcrowded cattle trucks travelling from Warsaw to Odessa. They were given no food and their armed guards said that they would be shot if they left the trucks.

"In the two months I was held by the Russians I received no food but boiled barley and black bread," said Cox. The Russians refused to let any of us send messages home to say that we were free. The cables we tried to send to the British Consul were torn up in front of us. "Everywhere we met hatred and suspicion. Although most of the equipment the Russians used and much of the food they ate came from the United States, the Americans were treated no better," Cox added. The conditions at the front in a Polish village where he had been hiding were "absolutely fantastic. Russian soldiers behave like animals. They were usually drunk with vodka. They confiscated homes and property at random. They raped Polish women in the open street. Polish home rule was just like a joke." Nothing could be done without permission from the Russians. A Russian corporal had more real power than a Polish general. Poles accused of collaboration were shot by Russian soldiers on the mere word of an informer.