SLAUGHTER OF JEWS

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 March 1945, Page 5

SLAUGHTER OF JEWS

GERMAN GUARD’S STORY

LONDON, March 23. What type of men are Gemans who slaughtered innocent men and women in German imprisonment camps? This thought has often been in mind when accounts of their brutality has been read. Judging by a report from a Daily Mail war correspondent, they regard themselves as being innocent, and merely as obeying their orders. The correspondent said he refused to shake hands with an S.S. guard, aged 22, who had been a guard at the notorious Lublin massacre camp. The German inquired: “But why? What have I done? I did not ask to be an S.S. guard. I only obeyed orders.” The correspondent continued: “It' meant nothing to him that 11,000 innocent men, women and children had been slaughtered and burned in Lublin, He told me a story of what he had seen and done in Lublin as dispassionately as you or I might describe a sports meeting which we found somewhat dull. He said: “In all, I saw about 16,000 Polish Jews arrive in Lublin camp. They were driven in in groups of from 500 to 1000 —whole families at a time — wheeling all their possessions with them. They were ordered to undress in barracks, and told to emerge without their clothing, as they were to be deloused. As they came out from the barracks, they were ordered at the point of the gun to march to trenches which had been dug by Russian prisoners. Men, women and children all walked to the trenches together, and knelt down. As soon as 200 or 300 had reached the trenches, machineguns were turned on them. We could kill several thousand that way daily if necessary. Russian prisoners filled in earth over them.”

The correspondent said he then asked whether no German soldiers had ever protested against being made party to such foul deeds. The reply was: “We were not party to them. We were soldiers, obeying orders. The Polish residents in Lublin and the surrounding districts protested, but no one listened to them!” Then the correspondent told this guard that Germans eventually killed the Russian grave diggers, so they would never be able to tell the world of the horrors they had seen in Lublin. He' said: “You must not believe such stories. We Germans would not kill the Polish prisoners of war. That would be illegal and inhuman.” That the wholesale slaughter of millions of Jews was equally atrocious, inhuman and illegal had never occurred to him.