BODIES CREMATED

Greymouth Evening Star, 18 October 1946, Page 7

BODIES CREMATED

Ashes of Nazis Secretly Dispersed THE GOERING MYSTERY (Recd. 10.35 a.m.) LONDON, October 17. An official communique issued by the Four-Power Commission for the detention of major war criminals announced that the body of Goering, together with the bodies of the war criminals executed at Nuremberg yesterday, had been cremated and the ashes secretly dispersed. The Paris newspaper Resistance publishes an interview in which Emmy Goering categorically denies providing cyanide to-her husband. She said: “I am surprised at being under suspicion. I was always closely watched. I equid not even put my little finger through the grill,” she added in tears. “I was never even able to kiss Hermann in prison. Life is finished now. I and my daughter Edda, prefer to die of hunger rather than accept any help. Aly last request to see Hermann was refused. I am happy it was.”

The Associated Press Nuremberg correspondent says that the stir caused by the visit of the eight eye-witness correspondents to the Nuremberg gaol late on October 15 may have given Goering the “tip” that execution was imminent. The correspondent, who was one of the eight, adds that the stir may also momentarily have given Goering an opportunity for unobserved action, because some of the guards turned from their cell door vigils as the pressmen entered the block. Keitel’s Intention? The Nuremberg prison commandant, Colonel Andrus, has revealed that Keitel, like Goering, planned to cheat the gallows. Keitel, after he returned to prison recently from the court, was changing into old clothes when a prison guard saw him push something down’ into a fold in his wallet. The guard grabbed the wallet and found a long sharp piece of metal, capable of slashing the wrists or throat. Keitel refused to explain how he obtained it.

Mr. Beverley Baxter, M.P., the Evening Standard’s dramatic critic, who reported the closing stages of the Nuremberg trial, describes the permission given for the Nazis’ last speeches as a piece of melodramatic muddle-headedness. He declares: “We have a right to know who gave the Nazis the footlights and arclights for their final justification.” A life-size model of Goering was found to-day hanging from a gibbet near Cambridge once used for hanging highwaymen. A proclamation issued by the central secretariat of the German Socialist Unity Party in Berlin says: “Now those responsible for the imperialist war have suffered death for their crimes against humanity, all who are weak and were only misled by their leaders should be given a chance to begin a new and better life. ’ Reuter’s correspondent says that this is seen in Berlin as the first big attempt by any political party to exonerate the huge body of “small Nazis” and bring them back to normal political life.

The Associated Press Berlin correspondent reports that British editorials blaming the Americans for delaying the announcement of the Nuremberg executions and Goering’s suicide drew a sharp rejoinder from American Government public relations officials. They pointed out that the arrangements were a four-Power responsibility, executed by the quadripartite commission and added that the charges that the gag was imposed on the press “comes with ill grace from the British, because their representative on the Control Council and also the French representative wanted to restrict the press and picture coverage of the executions to a minimum.” ' . , The public relations officials claimed that General McNarney led the fight in the Control. Council to give the world’s press access to the executions and in this he was supported by the Russians.