OCCUPIED COUNTRIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24825, 27 January 1942, Page 5

OCCUPIED COUNTRIES

NAZI TERROR INCREASING FAMILIES BROKEN UP (Rec. 9.30 p.m.) RUGBY, Jan. 25. As the under-currents of hostility gather in volume in the occupied countries of Europe so the grip of the Nazi terror tightens. In Austria, families where the sons or fathers have deserted from the German Army are being deliberately broken up, according to information reaching London. Wives have been sent to work in German towns exposed to British air raids. Boys under military age are forced into labour squadrons in Germany or Poland, and girls are sent to farmwork in Silesia. From Innsbruck alone, 40 such cases have been reported. In Poland sabotage continues in spite of all the German attempts to suppress it. Mass executions have taken place, which the Germans carry out as a part of the policy of allocating collective responsibility where sabotage occurs.

The cold reality behind the New Order is shown in different fashion, in Czechoslovakia, where the Germans have ceased to refer to the Protectorate ; of Bohemia and Moravia—nowcalled “ the former Czech space.” Significant, too, is the fact that henceforth German will be the language spoken at Cabinet meetings in Prague. The lengths to which the Germans will go to secure man-power are illustrated in the introduction of a new law in Norway whereby youhg men may join the German armed forces or the Norwegian Volunteer Legion against Russia without the consent of their parents. This law was announced ingenuously by the Vichy radio. Twenty-two Polish railwaymen were collectively executed according to a Gestapo communique on charges of systematic pillage of German military transport at a railway junction on the Polish-Czech border. PURGE OF NAZI LEADERS (Rec, 10 p.m.) LONDON. Jan. 25. Hitler’s purge is not being confined to the army, says the Daily Telegraph’s Stockholm correspondent. It is reliably staled that Herr Himmler is taking over the Ministry of the interior from Herr Frick and that Herr Reinhard Heydrich is taking Herr Himmler's position, thus concentrating the supreme administrative power oi German-occupied territory in the hands of Hitler’s two most fanaticalfollowers. It is reported that Herr von Papen is being transferred to Prague as the German Governor of Bohemia and Moravia as the result of his unsuccesful diplomacy in Turkey. ' There is no hint of Herr Frick’s new post.