NAZI HELL CAMPS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25829, 27 April 1945, Page 6

NAZI HELL CAMPS

VISIT BY GERMAN MAYORS COMMANDANT TO BE TRIED LONDON, Apl. 25. “ Six white-faced German mayors, with handkerchiefs clasped to ’ their noses, walked through the hell oi Belsen concentration camp, where they were taken to see the horrors cn behalf of their villages,” says the Daily Mail’s correspondent. “ What they saw was still a hell, although Allied medical teams have been working at top pitch for over a week

“ The margin between life and death is still imperceptible, and the flame flutters out as you watch, even as ycu talk to, people. Little flat heaps of rags on the roadside still conceal some frail body which lay down to die. There is still a stench which you feel will never leave the nostrils, There are still open pits filled wi(h jumbled bodies. Dour S.S. guards are being made to work until they drop collecting bodies and tipping them into pits.” It was officially announced at General Dempsey’s headquarters that Kramer, the Belsen camp commandant, earlier reported as having been tried and sh.t, will be tried by the countries against whose subjects he committed atrocities. The British. Russian, Jugoslav, Hungarian, and Polish Governments are likely to be concerned. It is stated: “Kramer has not yet been proved a war criminal in accordance with the law laid down for such prisoners. We are anxious to avoid any loose statements about the treatment of men of this nature. It is particularly important in Kramer’s case, because it is well known that he committed atrocities against Soviet citizens.”

The Russians recently liberated a German concentration camp at Konstantynew, in Central Poland, but found it was reserved entirely for children. There were 463 inmates, said Lieutenant-colonel K. R. Sokolenko, of the Red Army Medical Service, broadcasting over Moscow radio. “We found 100 half-emaciated children in filthy rags in the yard of a huge three-storey factory. Some wore cast-off German uniforms and some wLre bits of wood as shoes attached to their feet by string. As we entered they stood rigidly to attention with frozen, frightened faces. My -companions, experienced soldiers, were badly shaken by the sight of these little creatures, some aged five and no longer children, but old, with hearts and sculs crushed. They were all Russians, Ukrainians, and Byelo-Russians whose fathers had been burned in the Maidanek ovens. Each child over seven years of age was given a definite quota of work, and if he failed to complete it his food was stopped and he was beaten.” Political prisoners at Flossenburg concentration camp, nine miles northeast of Weiden, have been liberated by the Americans. They said to-day that the S.S. murdered the former Austrian Chancellor, Dr Schuschnigg, at the camp on April 15, reports the Associated Press correspondent. It will be recalled that prisoners from Buchenwald camp stated that Dr Schuschnigg had been removed from there before the Allies arrived.

The prisoners in Flossenburg also stated that the former German Finance Minister, Dr Schacht, had been removed to Dachau. • The Americans liberated 1600 prisoners, some of whom stated thqt the camp held 15,000 the week before the Americans arrived. The others were being marched to Dachau. The prisoners declared that 12,500 had been starved to death, hanged, shot, or killed by injections since the camp was established in 1938. One prisoner said he saw the camp doctor removing gold from Dr Schuschnigg’s teeth after the execution. The body was then burned in the camp crematorium. Prisoners said they saw 13 American paratroops hanged near the camp on April 1. One said he was detailed to cut the bodies down. They were then placed in camp ovens.