MASSACRES IN POLAND

Grey River Argus, 16 August 1944, Page 6

MASSACRES IN POLAND

Captured Germans FORCED TO DIG UP MANY VICTIMS (Rec. 9.5) LONDON, Aug. 15 The Moscow paper “Pravda” says: Russians are forcing captured Germans to unearth the bodies of hundreds of men, women and children massacred in Polanu. Murders occurred at the Maidanek prison camp near Lublin. Soviet officials say that

five hundred thousand persons were killed the camp. Twenty-five thousand Lublin citizens were taken .o Maidanek camp to watch the captured German garrison unearth the bodies of hundreds of their victims. A roar of anger- rose from the crowd all the time they stood beside a huge .litch, at the bottom of which Germans were working.” The “Pravda” correspondent says: “Captured German thugs and murd~rers cringed in terror and crouched wer their spades. Eight hundred Jermans were brought in for work urther down the diteffi They had to e conducted down the far side to jrotect them from the fury of the rowel'. A Nazi police chief in charge T Lublin and the Maidanek camp, Major-General Sack, was captured vith hundreds of officers and men. '.laidanek camp covered ten square miles, and it was known among Gernans as a ‘camp- of annihilation.’ Iroups of prisoners from all parts of Europe were brought to the camp or execution or torture. A favourlie method of murder was to gas prisoners. Most of the bodies were destroyed in a huge crematorium of ive furnaces, which was always kept ’.light. The furnaces could incinerate fourteen hundred bodies daily.”