RAVAGED TERRITORIES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 7 January 1944, Page 5

RAVAGED TERRITORIES

SHOCKING ATROCITIES ALLEGED London, Jan. 6. Whole colonies of Russians were reduced to stone age conditions since the Germans swept over their areas, says a war correspondent of the newspaper “Izvestia,” following a tour of ravaged territories now being liberated. The correspondent relates that in three days of horse riding in the NovogradVolynsk area he did not see a single person, house or village. Dozens of villages were systematically burned down. Inhabitants were locked in large stables which were set on fire and at Domanovich. 250 children were herded into a school and burned to death. A memorial mound has already been erected to the children reading: “Cursed forever be the German butchers.” Peasants were driven into their own wooden houses, the doors were nailed up and the buildings set on fire. Whole families perished, from a 100-years old grandfather to a few days’ old baby. Bedridden and sick were pinned to their beds by German bayonets before the home were set on fire. Those who escaped the systematic terror are now living in huge underground burrows. The correspondent met a man whose tongue was cut out and a girl whose eyes were put out with needles.