GHASTLY PRISON

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 119, 19 April 1945, Page 5

GHASTLY PRISON

SHOCKING REVELATIONS MOKE NAZI" HORRORS . ("N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.) (Rec. 11.5 a.m.) LONDON, April 18. General Dempsey's senior medical officer who visited the prison camp at Rclsen, near Bremen, says he saw a pile 00 to 80 yards long, 30 wide and four feet high of unclothed bodies of women within sight of, several hundred children. The gutters were filled with rotting dead men who -had come to die, using the kerbstones as backrests.

. There was bunk accommodation for only 474 - women .of the 1700 acute tvphus, typhoid and. tuberculosis cases. More than 18,000 women who should have been in hospital were lying on bare bug-ridden boards. There were bunks for only 1900 men from the 2250 acute cases. Seven thousand men should have been in hospital.

The medical officer said he drove around the camp with the German commandant—a typical German brute, a cruel, sadistic, heavy-fea-tured Nazi. He was quite unashamed.

There was no water for the 28,000 women, 11,000 men and 500 children in the camp. The compounds were rilled with dead and dying typhus cases. When the British brought food in they had to guard it with tanks. The British guards had to fire over the heads of the prisoners who were trying to get at the stbres. The prisoners included four Britons and an unsorted mass of Germans, French, Belgians, Russians, Poles and Czechs. The doctor said thousands of captured German soldiers had been paraded through the camp to see the conditions and the victims. The Americans captured the German ringleader, who planned the slaughter of 1100 political prisoners, with- many of his collaborators in a small town 25 miles north-east of Madgeburg, sayS the Associated Press correspondent with the Ninth Army. These prisoners were herded into a brick warehouse in which straw was piled several feet. deep and set on fire, before the Germans fled before the advancing Americans. ' .Several thousand grim-faced "doughboys" inspected the bodies. A sergeant from Long Island commented: "I was never so sure exactly what I am fighting for."