AIRMAN’S STORY OF CRUELTY

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 7, 3 October 1944, Page 5

AIRMAN’S STORY OF CRUELTY

Bulgarian Prison. Camp (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received October 2, 8.20-p.m.), LONDON, October 2. Many Allied airmen died in a Bulgarian prisoner of war camp from negligence aud cruelty, alleges an Allied air sergeant who arrived in Cairo from Bulgaria. He has signed a sworn statement describing the conditions iu the camp. Ho told the British United Press Cairo correspondent: “I saw a fellow prisoner operated on for stomach injuries. Immediately after the operation au attendant jerked him iuto a sitting position. The stitches burst and he fell back dead. Another prisoner who had head injuries was put into solitary confinement for four days without medical aid. He also died. Two hundred Allied prisoners were kept in a room intended for 50 people.” The sergeant, who was wounded in the foot when shot down over Bulgaria, said the prison doctors operated on him without an anaesthetic. “When I screamed a nurse struck me,’’ he said. “During the operation a Bulgarian officer came into the room and said, ‘You bombed Sofia,’ and hit me in the face with the butt of his gun. The doctor laughed at the incident. My foot developed gangrene and I had to undergo another operation.