GRUESOME TALES

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 80, 28 December 1940, Page 2

GRUESOME TALES

Torture In Poland BARBAROUS CONQUERORS “To suffer defeat aud not to surrender is victory.” This is the headline of a leading article iu a newspaper secretly’ published iu Warsaw, says a correspondent in the London "Times.” Both form and contents do honour to those responsible for it. A newspaper, indeed I There is no room for trifles in one produced aud read in danger of life. Foreign news fills most of the columns, for all hope is centred abroad while at home there is nothing but suffering; suffering and the will to hold out. In a country under enemy occupation (the article says) the struggle cannot be carried on with arms, but must consist in awakening the spirit of resistance, which will preclude despair and apathy, aud will make us do the work of the nation, be it under the hardest conditions. . . . This is now our main strength, and the enemy knows it, though he professes to sneer at it. Remember that “to suffer defeat and not to surrender is victory.” Excuse For Persecutions. That number, the 26th published, starts and concludes with a reminder to the readers that September 1 was the anniversary of the outbreak of war. Of this the- Poles were, anyhow, to be reminded by the Germans, who celebrate anniversaries in their own national calendar, as well as in that of the Poles, by preventive or punitive arrests.

Au alleged massacre of Volksdeutsche in the first days of the war had been a favourite official excuse for atrocious persecutions. Accordingly, for the anniversary, mass processions were arranged to the graves of the “martyrs”; in certain towns Poles were warned off the streets; and there were new trials and executions. Nowhere had the Fifth Column been more numerous and more active than in Poland, and in Bromberg, where tire local Germans had risen prematurely in revolt, there had been street fighting. But even there the Germans killed could not have been many, as the number of their dependants in receipt of pensions is 537. “Murdered” Germans. The total of German spies and insurgents killed in the whole of Poland amounted to a few hundred, but it grows posthumously through the Nazi technique of attributing their own performances to the opposite side. To begin with, the Germans themselves talked of 5060 “victims”; now the smallest number ever mentioned is 50,000; and every unidentifiable corpse (of which there are many in Poland) has a good chance of being made into an unknown Volksdeutsehe by the “Central Office for the Graves of Murdered Germans.” (Compare, for instance, the find at Kruszwica, reported in the Litzmannstadter Zeitung of September 12.) Indeed, eases are known of the corpses of executed Poles being photographed as those of “murdered” Germans. In June the number of executions in Warsaw alone amounted to 290, in July and August it was even greater; in September among 100 executed were 20 women. These figures were computed from quasi-legal proceedings, and do not include direct murders by the Gestapo, nor the victims of torture and ill-treatment in prisons and concentration camps. Occasionally the news of the death of an eminent man reaches wider circles. Thus it is now known that M. Rataj, a leader of the Peasants Partv anil Speaker of the Polish Parliament of 1922-2 S, a man of mild, conciliatory manners, but of an independent character, died “suddenly” while being “cross-examined” by the Gestapo. Tortured for Fun. Here is a passage from a reliable, report recently received in London Civil prisoners are made to work 1(> hours a dav. with half an hour for a scantv meal. While at work they are not allowed to rest. .. . 0 1(1 ? r an weaker men succumb in a short time. Moreover, they are tortured, often just for fun, bv warders chosen from among ex-criminals and select sadists. lor instance, water is poured from a rubber hose for an hour into the mouth, eyes, nose, or the abdomen of the victim ’ Or he is rolled to and fro over stones. Terrible beatings are applied. ... . If someone’s reaction, say hi< way of groaning, amuses these hangmen, the torture is prolonged: it is stopped when the man seems near death, and afterward if is resumed. I have had such accounts from many sides; and thev all agree as to rhe life and tor tures in the concentration camps. Similar methods are applied in prisons . . Of witnesses, if they survive, there will be tens of thousands who when their Ups are unsealed, wdl tell the story of that most gruesome product of humanity. Nazi Germany. Young Girls Kidnapped.

The most shocking of all “catches” are those of young girls for German military camps. News to that effect i« continually circulating, and even were it untrue, it would be a torture for parents of young girls. But it can hardly be doubted. It is enough to look at the advertisement columns of the German-controlled Press; every clay under “Missing” appear names of women aged 16-20, who left their house on such and such a day and have failed to return. These are outstanding horrors in a life which is anyhow a nightmare.