RUSSIAN FRONTS

Grey River Argus, 15 May 1944, Page 5

RUSSIAN FRONTS

SEBASTOPOL CLEAN-UP Dniester Operations [Aus. & N.Z. Press Assn.] (Rec. 7.30) LONDON, May 14. A Russian communique on Sunday stated: No material changes occurred throughout the front yesterday. Russians In the bridgehead on the-west bank of the Dniester, north-west of Tiraspol, repulsed repeated infantry tank attacks. 1 Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says that the Germans’ spoiling attack against the Red Army’s lower Dniester bridgehead was a direct reply to the loss of Sebastopol and a plain attempt to delay the battle for Roumania, which threatens to open up at any moment. For a month the Red Army has been poised on the Dniester for an assault against Kishinev to open the way for a drive round the Black Sea coast through the Galatz Gap to the Danube Valley. A Soviet correspondent stated: Red Arm v troops have wiped out the last remnants of the enemy in the Crimea. Losses by the Germans since the opening of the Crimean campaign on April 8 were given by Moscow as 111,587 men killed and captured. Three hundred tanks and self-propelled guns nearly 600 aircraft, more than 3000 guns, and more than 7000 lorries were also taken. Two hundred ships, including sixty-nine transports, were sunk. In the last assault on Sebastopol the German casualties included 20,000 killed and -25,000 taken prisoner.

A Soviet communique stated: Bombers on Friday night raided a concentration of enemy trains and military dumps at railway junctions in Dvinsk and Dorpat, causing explosions and fires. Lines from Riga, Vitebsk, Pskov and Vilna meet at Dvinsk. Dorpat is on a line from Tallinin to Riga. Successful blows by the Red Air Force against enemy shipping in the Barents Sea are reported in a Russian supplementary communique stating that two transports, totalling twelvethousand tons, were sunk en route to a port in Northern Norway under convoy. Russian planes also sank four escort vessels, a mine sweeper, and a coast guard cutter, and damaged two transports and two destroyers. They shot down six German planes. The Soviet air communique stated: As a result of bombing Russian ’planes at Dvinsk, in Latvia, goods trains in marshalling yards were set on fire, and there were several powerful explosions, one being; followed by a great fire. Ou a railway junction, Tartu, in Esthouia, ten fires broke out as trains and military dumps burned. Eleven explosions took place, one being described as terrific. One Soviet ’plane failed to return.

TRANSFER OF FRENCHPRISONERS. (Rec. 9.50.) LONDON, Ma v 13. The Moscow radio said: The French Committee of National Liberation some time ago asked Russia to hand over prisoners of war from the German Army of French nationality, particularly Alsatians and Lorraines, who voluntarily went over to the Red Army, and to direct them to North Africa for incorporation in the French Army. The Soviet Government has agreed and has issued the necessary instructions to Russian military authorities. STALIN PLANS RETRIBUTION. FOR NAZI MURDERS. {Rec. 11.50.) NEW YORK, May. 13. The “New York Times’s” Washington correspondent says: There have been confidential reports from Moscow that M. Stalin plans to exact a retribution for Nazi crimes wiilcii may shock the sensibilities of the Western world. The reports are.partially confirmed by the Soviet Embassy here in a bulletin. This bulletin reports that a Soviet investlgatcommittee ascertained that Nazis murdered, gassed, and tortured to death at least two million in occupied Soviet districts. The report cites documents captured from Gestapo headquarters in Kiev ordering wholesale but secret extermination of prisoners of war and civilians. Nazis who v/ere responsible for such crimes included Major-General Von Hindenburg, Chief of a Prisoners of War Camp in East Prussia; Lieutenant General Herrgot a Chief of prisoners’ camps in Poland. It stated that those who will pay the penalty for monstrous crimes include the personnel of firing squads and operational squads In prisoners’ camps.

HUNGARIAN FEARS. SUBJECTION TO RUSSIA. (Rec. 11.5.) LONDON, May 14. Budapest radio, replying to joint British and American and Russian warnings to satellites of Germany to get out of the war, said: “Their terms are regarded as implying a Complete subjection to Russia. Hungary is not pursuing any imperialistic aim in this war. She is merely defending her frontier and her historical mission. The British and those in the United States are so distant from Europe that they do not realise what subjection to Russia means. Therefore, Hungarv is determined to pursue the war against the Allies on the ci de of Germany. ( ;