GREEKS’ HARDSHIPS

Grey River Argus, 17 March 1942, Page 3

GREEKS’ HARDSHIPS

FOOD EN ROUTE.

LONDON, March 15.

The Associated Pi’ess Cairo correspondent stated local Greek ollicials informed him that between 150,000 and 200,000 Greeks had perished as a result of the Axis occupation of Greece—massacred, executed and died of starvation and disease due to malnutrition. The officials fear that unless some effective way is found to get more-adequate relief to Greece, half the population of 7 000,000 may be dead before the war is ended. The peak figure of deaths from starvation and malnutrition in Athens was reached in (February, when an intense cold wave augmented the suffering from lack of food and fuel. Fifteen hundred died daily in the Athens and Piraeus area. Many people stand in line all day to get a ration of four ounces of hard black bread, in which maize, rice and chestnut flour is mixed. An escapee said that infant mortality in Athens is appalling. A . park in the centre of the city has been, converted into a cemetery, because so ‘many people died in the centre of the city, and there is no transport to take them to the suburban cemelevies. Laden with 7,000 tons of the S,OOO tons of wheat which the British and I United States Governments have I agreed may be carried through the, blockade to bring relief to Greece, > the steamer “Radmanso” sailed from Haifa for Greece yesterday: morning. The Italian Government, had refused permission for the ship! to sail before March 15, claiming that six days’ notice of intention to sail had not been given.