BOHEMIA AND POLAND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 29 January 1940, Page 5

BOHEMIA AND POLAND

NAZIS METHODS EXPOSED ADDRESS BY MR CHURCHILL [British Official Wireless] RUGBY, 27th April. An important part of the address at Manchester to-day by the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr Churchill, was devoted to an exposure of the cruel oppression being - practised by the German forces of occupation in Bohemia and Poland. He invited the audience to look at what Nazi Germany had inflicted upon the peoples she had subjugated to her rule. “The German invaders pursue with every method of cultural, social and economic oppression their intention of destroying the Czech nation,” he said. “Students are shot by scores and tormented in concentration camps by thousands. "All the Czech universities—among them the Charles University of Prague, which was founded in 1348 and was the first university in Central Europe—have been closed. Clinics, laboratories and libraries have been pillaged or destroyed. Works of their national writers have been removed from the public libraries. “More than 2000 periodicals and newspapers have been suppressed. Prominent writers, artists and professors have been herded in concentration camps. The public administration and judicature have been reduced to chaos. “The Czech lands have been plundered. The property of the Churches is maladministered and engrossed by German commissars. One hundred thousand Czech workmen have been led off into slavery to be toiled to death in Germany. Eight millions of Czechs—a nation famous and recognisable as a distinct community for centuries—writhe under the Nazi tryranny. MOST HIDEOUS FORM “But everything happening to the Czechs pales in comparison with the atrocities being perpetrated upon the Poles. In German-occupied Poland the most hideous form of terorism prevails. In this there have been two distinct phases. In the first the Germans tried to cow the population by shooting individuals picked at random from the towns. At one place where they had decided to shoot 35 people they collected 34 victims and then, finding they were one short, went into a chemist’s shop and seized the first person they found. But later on they became more discriminating. They made a careful search for the natural leaders of Polish life—nobles, landowners and priests, as well as prominent workmen and peasants. It is estimated that upward of 15,000 intellectual leaders have been shot.

“These horrible mass executions are of frequent occurrence. At one place 300 men were lined up against a wall. At another a group of drunken German officers are said to have shot 70 hostages in a prison. At another 136 Polish students, some of whom were only 12 and 13 years old, were butchered. “Torture has been used. Press gangs seize men and women in the streets and drive them in droves to forced labour in Germany. Faminine stalks, not only amid the ruins of Warsaw, but far and wide throughout this ancient country which a few months ago was the home of a people of over 35 millions.”