AT ROTTERDAM

Hokitika Guardian, 12 July 1940, Page 5

AT ROTTERDAM

A BLIGHTED CITY. \lTnited Press Association —By Electria Telegraph—Copyright;. LONDON July 11. Over three weeks after the German bombardment of Rotterdam on May 5 last, in which thirty thousand civilians were killed, and twenty thousand were injured, rescuers discovered a number of girls in the cellar of a chocolate factory, where they had subsisted on chocolates, biscuits and lemonade, Information from Dutch circles in London, confirms previous reports oi the destruction of Rotterdam. bom three hours, scores of German dive bombers systematically rained heavy bombs ('n the unprotected open city. Only three buildings were left standing in nearly two square miles. Ilnee weeks after the bombardment corpses were still being recovered from the iuins at the rate of three hundred a day. Thirteen hundred lorries are still being employed each day in clearing a.way wreckage.

The Germans issued a statement in which they said that only three hundred were killed. In this connection a Dutch clergyman, at a commemoration service, said: “I commemorate Rotterdam’s three hundred dead, of whom eight hundred fell in m.v parish alone.”