MASSACRE OF SERBS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 144, 20 May 1941, Page 5

MASSACRE OF SERBS.

COLD BLOODED CRIME.

THOUSANDS PUT TO DEATH. LONDON, May 19. The Germans, Hungarians, and .Bulgarians in Yugoslavia are competing in cold-blooded massacres, aiming at extermination of the Serbians, says tlie Istanbul correspondent of tlie Times. Since the invasion, it is conservatively estimated, there have been 50,QU0 victims of mass executions.

At Vrsac a priest and 29 other persons have been hanged, while at Alibunar a professor and 70 students have been shot. The correspondent says this is typical oi the happenings in practically every Serbian town and village. L’riests are a special object of the invaders' hatred. The Patriarch Gavrilo was brought to Belgrade and his clerical robes were removed; he was con lined in his underclothes to the ground floor of a building where he is in view to the passers-by.

Eighty thousand Serbs have been expelled from the territory that is now allocated to Hungary, and thousands more have been expelled from Serbian .Macedonia by the Bulgarians. Husbands are separated from their wives and mothers from their children.

In spite of the deliberate attempt •at extermination, the Serbians are maintaining their offensive spirit ana between 50.000 and (30.000 Serbians, commanded by officers of the Yugoslav | army, are continuing guerilla warfare in the mountains of Bosnia and Montcj negro and also around Kragujevac. j In a ceremony in Rome to-day Dr. Pavelich formally offered the Crown ol | Croatia to King Victor Emmanuel. [Pavelich is the man who engineered | the assassination of King Alexander! o| Yugoslavia at Marseilles in 1934,1 and is under a death sentence in! France Tile streets of Rome were, decorated with the Italian and Croat-j ian colours, and the Rome radio broadcast- a running commentary on the arrival of the Croatian delegation. I Pavelich was put at the head of a! ceremonial procession and given the! use of a luxurious villa reserved for! Italy's most honoured guests. This contrasts sharply with his visit in 1930' when he was thrown into prison at Turin

The Reich Minister (Dr. Clodius) has gone to the country to establish “commercial relations” between Germany and the new State, and a permanent frontier commission lias been sot up at' Vienna. Meanwhile feverish work is l>eing carried out on new national legislation in Croatia. Lockouts and strikes have been prohibited, and production will be entirely State controlled. -