THOUSANDS LEAVE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13668, 16 June 1942, Page 5

THOUSANDS LEAVE

COLOGNE EVACUATED RA F BOMBS PULVERISE EVEN CONCRETE SHELTERS London, June, 14. Abetz, the Nazi envoy to Paris, last week told his immediate Vichy collaborators that" Cologne devastation was so great after the R.A.F. raid that evacuations had already exceeded 250,000 of the total population of 760,000. The "Times" correspondent on the French frontier, reporting this, says that it believedly explains why the Germans' labour front last week ordered a census of labour accommodation through, the Reich with authority to force families to take in the homeless. It is officially stated that the evacuations from Lubeck were 3 0,000 and from Rostock 80,000. Abetz said it was impossible accurately to estimate Cologne's death roll because an unknown number were still under the ruins. The German Government believed that the deaths were between 11,000 and 15,0 00, with twice that number injured. In addition to the houses «utted, many were unsafe and must be destroyed. The population was turbulent at the inadequate protection against the raids, said Abetz. The powerful RA F bombs pulverised even reinforced concrete shelters 30ft below the surface. Hundreds were suffocated and hundreds killed through pulping of the lungs by the stupenuous air pressure. Others, with overstrung nerves from privations of the war. have become insane. Their violence was demoralising to witness. A Berne message says reliable foreign diplomatic quarters state that Germany and Italy have advanced new proposals to France to end the armistice, but French objections to the territorial clauses and the internal political uncertainty make realisation of a formal peace treaty unlikely.