GRIM PICTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27384, 9 May 1950, Page 7

GRIM PICTURE

German War Prisoners Return HOME FROM RUSSIA BERLIN, May 7. Nearly 200 evil-smelling, louseridden, and almost dumb men crossed the frontier at Gebra into Western Germany today—l9l German prisoners coming back home from Russia. Almost the only thing they could speak of was the ghosts they left behind them- - German prisoners of war whom the Russians claim no longer exist. The returned prisoners laughed bitterly when told of the Moscow claim that only 13,000 prisoners had not been sent home. “ It is impossible even to guess how many are left behind, but there are certainly tens and tens of thousands,” said one prisoner. “We have just left them in the camps we came from. Russian officers themselves told us in Brest-Litovsk two weeks ago that they expected another 150.000 to go through that transit camp alone.” Each of the tattered men had a personal story to tell of a Russian slave camp still filled with prisoners. Some prisoners said there were still thousands of German women in Russia, some working in coal mines standing in water up to the waist. Twenty-six-year-old Albert Rether said: “We were always hungry. Hunger is what most men die of—hunger and typhus. Nobody will ever know how many died. At the hospital in Brest-Litovsk they buried over 3000 since 1945.” One ex-corporal estimated that there were still about 45 high-ranking German generals alive in Russian camps.