RULE BY TERROR

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20620, 22 November 1941, Page 5

RULE BY TERROR

MASS MURDERS PRISON CAMPS NAZI WAY IN EUROPE (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) LONDON, Nov. 19. A committee representing the Allied Governments in London has placed on record a statement which, dispassionate as it is, constitutes a damning indictment of the system of “hostages” by which the Germans are endeavouring ceaselessly to crush the spirit of the enslaved peoples of Europe. The statement, it is explained, does not seek to give complete information about the facts, which cannot be fully known till the war has been won, and it should be regarded as indicating the trend of policy rather than the intent of the ruthlessness in the various countries concerned.

The methods of intimidation which are employed by the Germans are, n states, often diabolically ingenious. A typical example is seen in Norway, where all the young men of 21 to 25 in certain areas near Oslo have recently been ordered to join the railway guard,” which has the duty of watching the lines and preventing sabotage. Each “guard” is required to sign a declaration that he is “responsible with his own life for keeping watch on the section to which he is posted.” In Poland, where the barbarous system of collective responsibility without trial is in force, a similarly ingenious method is employed. In the country districts the Germans appoint so-called committees of trustees composed of the village mayor, priest, teacher, and other leading members of the community.

These are responsible for the delivery by the whole village of the amount of grain stipulated by the Germans as a levy for the feeding of German troops in Poland and requisitioned for export to Germany. If the enormous levy cannot be raised the trustees are sent tc specially-built concentration camps in Lubin and Ciechanow.

30,000 Died in Camps.

What the incarceration means can be judged from the fact that 30,000 Poles have died in the camps during the two years of the German occupation of PoLand. The statement incidentally gives the most cold-blooded example of mass shooting of hostages on record. When last year Polish workers in a factory at Skarzysko refused to make ammunition for the Germans the Gestapo surrounded the factory and from the. 2,000 workers picked 300 as hostages, demanding that work be started within 24 hours. The workers again refused and the 300 hostages were shot.

Such patriots are among the 8.20 C Poles who have been executed during the two years of Poland’s continuing ordeal.

A particularly revolting deterrent was employed in Norway after the British raid on the Lofoten islands, when the relatives of the young people who had volunteered to come to Britain were arrested and sent to a concentration camp near Oslo. The Germans followed this by instituting a general practice of arresting as hostages the fathers of the young people who escaped. The number arrested is believed to total hundreds. Hunger Reprisal , In France, where in two months 250 Frenchmen have been shot, including 50 hostages at Nantes and 50 t Bordeaux, many, cunning methods have been adopted as variants. In Saarebourg, in annexed Alsace, the Nazis punished the population by deporting a member of practically every family in the town. A tuwn in the north of France, where there were Joan of Arc demonstrations, was threatened with a withdrawal of the ration cards. In a town in Normandy where students spread de Gaulle placards the whole population was deprived of meat for 40 days. Intolerably heavy fines and the virtual imposition of long curfews are other methods. It may not be generally realised that the 6 p.m. curfew which was imposed on all of occupied France after the Nantes and Bordeaux shootings is still in force.

The Netherlands has suffered severely ever since the Dutch East Indies, acting within its rights, interned German residents. The Germans retaliated by arresting 600 innocent Dutch subjects and dragging them to camps, in which many nave since died.

The plight of another batch of 600 Dutch Jews is also an example ol the Nazi methods. They were simply rounded up in the streets, bundled into cars and taken away. By the end of July 130 had died at Mauthausen concentration camp. By the end of October the death-roll there nad risen to nearly 500. Savours Of Inquisition

'Other young men of 18 and 35 have been deported privately from Holland and sent to work in saltpetre mines. Amsterdam has been fined £2,000,000 for protesting by riot and strike. While the German means of terrorism are often in a literal sense ■‘devilishly clever,” their methods ol justification are clumsy in the extreme. Particularly is this seen in Czechoslovakia, where many prominent Czechs were murdered wiren the Nazis became aware of the underground activities and sabotage. Of <he number executed on September 28 last—the day Heydrich proclaimed martial law in various parts of the “protectorate”—most had been in prison for nearly two yeais. But Heydrich the previous version of “high treason” two days later and explained that they had been killed not for recent crimes but for their old conspiracies, the full facts of which had only just come to light. Up to November 352 Czech citizens had been executed and 1070 others sentenced to be handed over to the Gestapo, a grim sentence that savours of the inquisition days.