INUNDATIONS IN HOLLAND

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24372, 26 September 1944, Page 3

INUNDATIONS IN HOLLAND

SERIOUS EFFECTS OF GERMAN MEASURES HOMELESS ESTIMATED AT 500,000 A report recently issued by the Netherlands Indies Government Information Service said that the consequences of the inundation of a great part of Holland were more severe than was at first imagined—recent reports indicated that approximately 400,000 acres of agricultural land have been withdrawn from food production. The number of persons evacuated in the province of north Holland alone amounted to 200,000. It was estimated that at least half a million people had been driven from their homes by the German inundation measures, “The underground movement In Holland announces that.the number of raids is increasing, particularly those • on rationing offices,” the report continued “This is connected with the very great living underground who, according to authoritative Netherlands circles in England, are now estimated at a quarter million people. * ‘At the same- time the activities of the German Gestapo in Holland are also increasing. Evidence of this is the long lists qf death-sentences which are regularly published, not to mention the still longer lists which are never published. The number ,of arrests in the past weeks has been frightening. It is estimated that 12,000 Dutch are now incarcerated in Holland, and 14,000 in Germany. The state of ■ affairs in Holland was revealed by a recent statement of the German police president in which an enormous number of fires, especially in German stores> were reported.”