IN NAZI HANDS

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24329, 7 August 1944, Page 4

IN NAZI HANDS

WAR BOOKS

Prisoner of the Kormbran. The Experiences of W. A. Jones, as related by James Taylor. Australasian Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd. 318 PP-

Mr W. A. Jones, a ship’s cook on the Mareeba, one of the last victims of the Nazi armed merchantman Kormoran, had an adventurous voyage to a Nazi prison camp, near Bremen. The last of three prison ships to which he had been transferred was sunk; he and other survivors were cast away for days in an open boat; a U-boat picked them up and landed them at Lorient. Mr Jones found the best hearts among the Germans among the seamen on the prison ships, but his general summing up is heavily against them. Bright patches in the book are those which describe the spirit of resistance of the French, Belgian, and Dutch people The darkest are those abmit the brutality of the Nazis to Russian prisoners, thousands of whom, both men and women, have starved to death in German slave camps. Mr Taylor has made a brilliant narrative of Mr Jones’s experiences, which close with his being exchanged.

SOCIAL SECURITY Social Security: Principles and Problems arising out of the War. Report IV, parts 1 and 2, submitted to the twenty-sixth session of the International Labour Conference. Published by the 1.L.0., Montreal, 1944. These reports embody the material —a survey of evidence, statement of principles, and recommendations—laid before the Philadelphia conference. FIGHTING RUSSIANS The Russian Army, By Walter Kerr. Gollancz. 140 pp. This book is reviewed in a leading article in this issue.