Patea & Waverley Press MONDAY, MAY 12, 1941 GERMANY'S VICTIMS

Patea Mail, 12 May 1941, Page 2

Patea & Waverley Press MONDAY, MAY 12, 1941 GERMANY'S VICTIMS

TUI 1 ] Prime Minister of Great

Britain, Mr Winston Churchill, and the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Menzies, have each recently declared that Britain will eventually win the war. There is nothing surer. After the treatment that is being meted out to the people of those countries that have fallen under the Nazi heel, British subjects the world* over would prefer to perish rather than submit to German rule. A shocking illustration of the barbarity of the German conqueror comes froin Poland. The story is told by a Polish priest who recently arrived in America from a small village near Lodz. He stated that one night as an act of retaliation, five hundred women, children and old people in the village were fetched from where they slept, carefully catalogued and shot. The Gestapo, the priest reports, waited neither for hearings nor charges. Nor were there tortures or terrorism. It was a plain, icy measure of retaliation. These murdered Polish peasants were Avivcs and children of a group of Polish prisoners in the German camp at Magdeburg. Detailed to work in the fields, the prisoners had sabotaged the turnip crop and poisoned the cattle and horses under their care. Each of the Madgcburg prisoners of war was duly informed that, because of his treason, his wife, his parents and his children back - in the little Polish village, had been “liquidated.” Then he was given 24 hours to reflect that he was the real‘murderer of his dear ones —before being stood against the barrack yard Avail at Madgeburg. In Norway another conquered nation German brutality is also in evidence. . Three Norwegians Averc recently arrested in Bergen for transmitting to Britain valuable military information. The German Military Court in Oslo condemned them to death... The executions Averc carried out on the spot. This, hoAvever, did not intimidate the Norwegians. As a matter- of fact it merely served to provoke them to further acts of hostility toAvards their German masters. Recently the - London radio gave exact details of foodstuffs in Oslo that could have been'obtained only by 'secret information from' NorAvay’s ncAV-style “Fifth Columnists . ’ ’ When R. A. F. flyers attacked Haugesund, Tromsoc, and other places, they proved to be exactly informed about the location of military objectives, in a recent British air raid the targets Avcre oil storage tanks. Out of four tarries, only two Averc attacked and destroyed by incendiary bombs; the oilier two were left intact—because they Averc amply. When Britain succeeds in defeating tire German terrorists avlio hold sAvay at the present time, oidy at the point of tin' bayonet, there art- a hundred and fifty million sullen people avlio will see to it that never again Avill Germany be able to dominate -their respective countries. Hitler is only keeping these people from rising by armed force. Half a million German troops are re-

quircd to “pacify” the Polish people, and eighty thousand to keep the peaceful people of Holland from rising. The Norwegian people showed their■ opinion of Hitler and his ally the archtraitor Major Quisling, when the Storthing, Norway’s Parliament, by a vote of 149 to one refused to have anything to do with Quisling and his puppets. In France the position is very much the same. In spite of the fifth columnists in their midst there arc •11 million Frenchmen who know that not only their personal freedom but their chance of survival as a nation depends on the victory of Britain in the war. As one writer has very aptly put it, “regardless of armies of occupation, regardless of mass terrorism, hatred smoulders among Germany’s conquered races—awaiting only a dramatic British triumph to burst into flame.” The civilised world will hope that the triumph may be soon.