HUNDREDS DROWNED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 85, 9 March 1945, Page 5

HUNDREDS DROWNED

COLOGNE BRIDGE COLLAPSES LONDON, March 8.

Hundreds of residents of Cologne were drowned in the last dramatic hours before the city’s fall, when the Hohenzollern Bridge, over which the Nazis were forcing them to cross to the east bank, collapsed, says the Daily Mail correspondent in Cologne. When the Americans approached the city Nazi officials entered large airraid shelters near the Cathedral and ordered thousands of shelterers to cross the bridge, threatening them with hand grendaes if they refused. The crowd reached the much bombed bridge, when it gave a tremendous lurch and collapsed. Scores were crushed to death among the fallen girders. German eye-witnesses said: “Tt was a final act of horror in a terrible week.”

Contrary to earlier reports, Cologne Cathedral, one of the most renowned Gothic buildings in the world, is badly damaged. The correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph Agency says the Cathedral is almost a shell cluttered up with piles of debris feet high.

The Cathedral authorities estimate that it will take 10 years to restore it, probably longer, depending on what labour and materials are available to Germany. It ceased to function as a cathedral on June 29, 1943, when the R.A.F. heavily raided Cologne. Thereafter services were held in a tiny domed room off the confessional. All the damage is the result of blast. Not a single Allied bomb ever hit the building.