SERBIAN PEOPLE MASSACRED

Southland Times, Issue 24439, 20 May 1941, Page 5

SERBIAN PEOPLE MASSACRED

CRUELTY OF GERMANS EXTERMINATION OF RACE SOUGHT (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) LONDON, May 19. Germans, Hungarians and Bulgarians in Yugoslavia are competing in a cold-blooded massacre, aiming at the extermination of the Serbians, says the Istanbul correspondent of The Times. Since the invasion it is conservatively estimated there have been 50,000 victims of mass executions.

At Vrsac a priest and 29 others were hanged, while at Alibunar a professor and 70 students were shot. The correspondent says this is typical of the happenings in practically every Serbian town and village. Priests are the special object of the invaders’ hatred. The patriarch, Monsignor Gavrilo, was brought to Belgrade. His clerical robes were removed and he was confined in his underclothes on the ground floor of a building, where he is in view of passers-by. Eighty thousand Serbs have been expelled from the territory now allocated to Hungary and thousands more have been expelled from Serbia and Macedonia by the Bulgarians. Husbands have been separated from their wives and mothers from their children. Despite this deliberate attempt at extermination the Serbians maintain their offensive spirit. Between 50,000 and 60,000 Serbians, commanded by officers of the Yugoslav Army, continue guerilla warfare in the mountains of Bosnia and Montenegro, also around Kragujevac.