VILNA GARRISON CORNERED

Evening Star, Issue 25224, 11 July 1944, Page 5

VILNA GARRISON CORNERED

100,000 CIVILIANS MURDERED DURING GERMAN STAY (Bee. 12.50 p.m.) LONDON. July 10. The German News 'Agency commentator, von Hammer, said the focal point of the latest fighting was Vilna, where the German garrison had withdrawn to the centre of the city. The second important point .was the Russian attempt to bring about the collapse of the whole Dvinsk line, but the •Germans had ;smashed most of the attacks: ■'■'■ ■'-.''..!' ' ':■-'-•'• 'Pravda' reports that mutinies among German troops and Lithuanian levies occurred at Vilna and Kaunas and other points. The Germans had to disarm these forces, which were commanded by the pro-Nazi Lithuanian, General Piekhavichius. The Supreme Council of the Lithuanian Soviet Paleckis stated that the Germans in Vilna had rounded up thousands of Russians, including war prisoners, soaked them in paraffin, and set them on fire. Over 100,000 people had been .put to death in Vilna. The Germans, to speed up the executions, laid a special branch railway line to the , place of execution, so that the victims could be brought by .trains to their very graves. Only 50,000 survive of Vilna's prewar population of 250,000. The British United Press Moscow correspondent reports that Stalin's Colonel Vassily Stalin, commands a fighter group which is part of the air spearhead blasting a path before the Red; armies' advancing to Grodno.