REPATRIATED PRISONERS

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 November 1944, Page 2

REPATRIATED PRISONERS

VARIED EXPERIENCES.

BOMBAY, October 30. A party of 600 New Zealanders and Australians homeward bound, after three years in German and Italian orison camps, arrived at Bombay, where they are being entertained. Approximately 100 are Australians repatriated from Germany for health reasons. The remainder escaped from Italy after the armistice through the Alps to Switzerland. The New Zealanders were conducted from Switzerland by Major R. S. Orr, St. Kilda, Dunedin. . , Stories of treatment m Italy varied considerably. Some have not a good word to say for the Italians, who m the notorious prison camp PG. 57 and Udine, rewarded the guards who shot escaping prisoners with 900 lira and ten weeks’ leave. Others tell of guards who connived at attempted escapes and then shot the prisoners they caught in the act. On the contrary most agree that Italian women, particularly in northern districts, were undaunted by threats of Nazi reprisals, which cowed their menfolk, and consistently gave help. Lance Corporal M. Knight, of Victoria, had a rare experience’ of Italian generosity. He lived ten months with a family who had worked in Australia before the war. When he contracted pneumonia two doctors were called and he was given special foods then almost unobtainable. Spies reported the man who owned the house, and he was taken out and shot. Another Victorian Corporal R. Funston was rescued on the Jugoslav-Austrian frontier by partisans who saved 84 Allied prisoners from a labour camp where he was working. All men agreed that without Red Cross parcels they would not have survived on the meagre Italian diet.