NAPLES’ ORDEAL

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 309, 24 September 1943, Page 7

NAPLES’ ORDEAL

Nazi Frightfulness Continued

LONDON. September 22.

Amid terrific explosions as tiie Germans blow up docks, jetties, and warehouses under an ever-growing pall of smoke, German soldiers are flogging Italians in the streets of Naples for the most trivial offences. Revealing this, an Italian sailor who escaped from Naples to Capri in a rowing-boat gave Allied headquarters a grim storjof conditions within the city. He said that the Germans, on a variety of pretexts, are rounding up as many as 50 Italians at a time and shooting them en bloc. Other Italians who escaped report rape, pillage and slaughter comparable with anything which occurred in Warsaw. . The United Nations’ radio at Algiers said that the scale of the demolitions in Naples seems to indicate that the Germans have given up all hope of holding the city. Reports from neutral sources say that severe lighting is taking place in Naples between German and Italian troops and that many Italian officers and troops have been executed. The Germans are reported to have executed General Gonzaga, the Italian commander of the coast defences on the Gulf of Salerno, for non-co-opera-tion with the German forces.. Rome radio announced tonight that Field-Marshal Kesselring has ordered the execution of anybody guilty of hoarding food or operating a black market. This was stated to be essential to overcome the serious food shortage. A neutral report states that the Germans are looting food from Italian villages and farms because of the failure of their own food supplies. Rome radio has further ordered all men within Rome who belong to the 1920-25 military classes to report immediately for service. Algiers radio reports that the Germans fired on crowds demonstrating in Rome, where resistance is increasing.

Fighting among houses is going on everywhere. Civilians are participating with stones and their bare hands. The Germans, in contrast to their previous behaviour, seem to have been given . a free hand to ill-treat Italians and kill wantonly. Italian soldiers are being given swastika armbands and marched out to build defences for the Germans.