NAZI OUTRAGES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 6, 8 January 1942, Page 6

NAZI OUTRAGES

IN SOVIET TERRITORY

RUSSIAN NOTE

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

LONDON, January 6.

The Moscow radio says that the Foreign Commissar, M. Molotov, has presented a Note to the representatives of all the countries with which the Soviet has diplomatic relations, regarding wholesale looting, destruction, and atrocities committed by the Germans in the territory which the Russians have recaptured! M. Molotov declared that the outrages were intensified when the Red army's attacks compelled the Germans to retreat.

There was incontrovertible evidence that the German acts were not those of separate undisciplined military units or individuals, but were done according to a previously prepared plan fostered by the German Government and the High Command. The Note declared that every step by the German army and its allies in Soviet territory was marked by the imposition upon the peaceful population of hard labour, hunger, and bloody tortures; "in comparison with which the most' terrible crimes in human history pale into insignificance."

There were thousands of cases of robberies from industrial undertakings.' Whole quarters in cities like Novgorod, Kharkov, Rostov, and Kalinin had

been wrecked, while towns like Istra and Rogachev were a mass of ruins.

The Note declared that the Germans razed hundreds of villages in the Ukraine, White Russia, Leningrad,'and other regions. In a village in the Tula region 960 houses out of 998 were destroyed and 554 of 602 were destroyed in, another village. The Germans applied paraffin to houses in a village in the Moscow area before setting them on fire, and then shelled the village when the, inhabitants attempted to quench the flames. CAPTURED DESTRUCTION ORDER. The Note quotes an order which was captured in the Orel district, instructing German troops to convert every evacuated town or zone into a desert. In carrying <sut this order the retreating invaders are blowing up and burning houses, municipal centres, libraries, factories, schools, hospitals, and churches, the Note declares. Fifty-two thousand men and women —anybody loyal to the Soviet —were killed in Kiev in a few days. Large numbers of Jews were lined up at the Jewish cemetery and told to lie down, whereupon they were shot with automatic weapons and their bodies covered with earth. Another batch was brought up and treated similarly, and immediately buried over the previous victims. ' - Eight thousand of the inhabitants were shot in Kamenets-Podolsk, and 3000, mostly old men and children, in Mariupol. Several thousand more were shot in Kerch. Tens-of thousands were killed in Rostov. On one occasion the Germans slaughtered 60 inhabitants on the pavement in the main street. The Note quotes examples of the German employment of peaceful inhabitants as cover for German troops in battles against the Red army, and adds: "There is no limit to the bloodthirstiness and cruelty of the German invaders. Hitler's armies are waging no ordinary war, but a murderous war of extermination against peaceful men, women, and children." UNFORGETTABLE ACTS. Detailing other atrocities, the Note says that on the day after they entered Lvov 'the Germans massacred hundreds of people and afterwards disfigured the bodies. "The first place in this dreadful exhibition was occupied by the body of a woman to which the body of her child was nailed with a bayonet," it states.

"The Government lays all the responsibility for these ruthless, inhuman, and rapacious acts by the, German troops on the criminal Hitlerite Government of Germany," it adds. "In all eternity, Russia will not and'cannot forget what Germany has done to her. Russia declares that for all the German brutalities she will call down on the Germans the\ most raging curse and the most sacred vengeance. Russia will pay back a hundredfold every crime committed by Germany, and the same punishment will be meted out to countries which are allied with Germany and Italy."

The diplomatic correspondent of the "Daily Mail" says M. Molptov's Note declared, first, /that Germany must be disarmed and made incapable of aggression; secondly, that Germany must be made to endure suffering equal to Russia's: and, thirdly, that Germany must rebuild all that she destroyed. "The Soviet Government wishes to make the position clear so that there shall be no misunderstanding after victory," the Note explained.