TREATED LIKE ANIMALS

Grey River Argus, 25 February 1941, Page 10

TREATED LIKE ANIMALS

POLISH PRISONERS. LONDON, February 22. A high French officer who was captured in Norway, but managed to escape from Germany across the Balkans to join the Free French forces in the Middle East has, in a press interview, given revealing details of French war prisoners. He said they were underfed, and the food was not fit to eat. A French peasant would not feed his pigs with it. “It was just enough to keep one alive, but not to keep one in health.” French and Polish prisoners were made to work like horses. They worked 14 hours a day, and during the lunch hour. Their clothes were confiscated and given to German workers. He had seen some of them made to work in the depths of winter sockless and hatless, and wearing only a' cotton shirt and shorts. Every effort was being made to break down their morale by anti-British propaganda. The “Trait d’ Union” is published in Berlin, edited by A.F.W. Doriot sympathisers found among the two million French prisoners in Germany. “The propaganda is such,” said the officer, “that I myself really believed the French Fleet had already been handed over to Germany when I managed to escape.”