BRUTALLY TORTURED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 185, 6 July 1945, Page 5

BRUTALLY TORTURED

ALLIED PRISONERS MORE NAZI ATROCITIES (N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.) (Hem 1U.45 a.m.) LONDON, July 5. Special Army investigators have discovered that at least nine of 26 men reported missing from the Sesond Special Air Service Regiment after attacks in the Yosges Mountains last year were brutally tortured and shot by the Germans, says the Evening Star. The investigating party reports that probably other members of the party suffered the same fate.

There is evidence that one man found dead was beaten until the bones of his back showed. Another was strung up over a bonfire and burned to death. Several Germans have been arrested for their part in the atrocities. The Germans called the regiment “terrorists” and threatened to shoot them when found. General Eisenhower at the time warned that if this happened the guilty would be held responsible Eight mass graves in the Karlsbad region have been reopened and the bodies of 930 victims of the Gestapo death march have been recovered, says the Associated Press correspondent in Prague. Almost certainly there will be some New Zealand and Canadian war prisoners among the victims, but the Czech authorities say that' none has been positively identified. The Gestapo organised the march from the east to camps north of Prague in the last days of the war. Many were slain in the Karlsbad area' because they were too weak to march and other died from fatigue.