OCCUPIED COUNTRIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 March 1942, Page 5

OCCUPIED COUNTRIES

CZECH. RESISTANCE.

RUGBY, March 15. More than 2000 Czechoslovakian subjects in London attended a meeting convened by the Czechoslovak State Council lo commemorate the third anniversary of the Nazi maren into Prague. , M. Osek, a member of the State Council, said that virtually the entire Czechoslovak nation was resisting the enemy. The production ol arms in Czechoslovokia had deceased considerably, in some cases by 40 per cent The number of Slovaks deseiting to the Red Army was growing, and anti-Fascist Sudeten Germans were also effectively hampering the Nazi war machine. The Czechoslovak air force in Britain was pounding the enemy, and a Czechoslovak army in Russia would soon go mto actio '.. A Czechoslovak army in Britain was preparing in the hope that it would soon come to grips with the enemy. A special message of encouragement was broadcast by Lord Granbourne, Colonial Secretary, to Czechoslovakia. “All we in Britain and throughout the world who believe in liberty have watched with profound admiration the valiant stand which tne Czechoslovak people are making against Nazi tyranny,” Lord Cranborne said. “No nation has ever shown more heroic resistance. It has shone nke an unquenchable flame m the dark night through which we are passing. We salute you and bid you to be of good cheer. The arms of freedom are on the march, and with God’s will we shall soon be through our troubles. Then you noble Czechoslovak people will win your reward. GREEK MORTALITY. LONDON, March 15. Between 150,000 and 200,000 Greeks have perished as a result of the Axis occupation of Greece —massacred, executed, and died of starvation and disease due to malnutrition. The Associated Press Cairo correspondent says that this figure was given him by local Greek officials, on the basis of escapees’ accounts. Officials fear that unless some effective way is found to more-adequate relief to Greece, half the population of 7,000,000 may be dead before the war is ended. The peak figure of deaths from L starvation and malnutrition in Athens > was reached in February, when an in--1 tense cold wave augmented the sui--1 fering from lack of food and fuel, t Fifteen hundred died daily in the Athens and Piraeus area. 1 Many people stand in line all day ■> to get a ration of four ounces of hard . black bread, in which maize, rice and chestnut flour is mixed. An escapee said that infant mortality in Athens is appalling. A park in the centre of the city has been converted into a cemetery, because so x many people died in the centre of tne g city, and there is no transport to take o them to the suburban cemeteries. NORWEGIAN DEANS. „ LONDON, March 15. n “Tho Times’s” Stockholm corress pondent states: Deans attached to e seven of the Norwegian Bishops have ,r now been summarily dismissed. Then’ _ dismissal followed their refusal to - take up the functions of the Bishops. >f Major Quisling has empowered the _ Church Department to instal mher — clergymen within the dioceses, and seven obscure local vicars have been appointed.