Brutal Treatment In Bulgar P.O.W. Camp

Northern Advocate, 3 October 1944, Page 3

Brutal Treatment In Bulgar P.O.W. Camp

LONDON, October 2. Many Allied airmen died in a Bulgarian prisoner-of-war camp from negligence and cruelty, alleges an Allied air sergeant who has arrived at Cairo from Bulgaria. He has signed a sworn statement describing the conditions in the camp. He told the Cairo correspondent of the British United Press: “I saw a fellow prisoner operated on for stomach injuries. Immediately after the operation an attendant jerked him into a sitting position, the stitches burst and he fell back dead. Another prisoner, who had head injuries, was put into solitary confinement for four days without medical aid. He also died. Two hundred Allied prisoners were kept in a room intended for 50 people.” The sergeant, who was wounded in a foot when shot down over Bulgaria, said that prison doctors operated on him without an anaesthetic. “When I screamed, a nurse struck me. During the operation a Bulgarian officer came into the room and said: ‘You bombed Sofia,’ and hit me in the face with the butt of his gun. The doctor laughed at the incident. My foot developed gangrene and I had to undergo another operation.”