FASCIST BRUTALITY

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22786, 10 January 1944, Page 5

FASCIST BRUTALITY

First-hand Evidence

APPALLING TREATMENT OF PRISONERS

(Rec. 8.30) LONDON, Jan. 8. Personal evidence of 'Fascist brutality was given by Dr Henry Ashton Wolfe, a British author and criminologist, in an interview with “The Times.”

Dr Wolfe, who escaped in disguise after three years as a Fascist captive, describes how for five days of a journey he was chained to two other prisoners so that all three had to sit down and lie down together. Their hands were so manacled that it was impossible for one to eat unless the others raised their hands. Dr Wolfe was first imprisoned in an underground dungeon in a sixteenth century San Remo castle, where rats fought for the bread which was dropped in and the water developed slime. The prison doctor warned the authorities that Dr Wolfe’s life was endangered, after which he was sent to another prison where he saw a Frenchman who was condemned to be shot commit suicide by dashing at full speed along the corridor and crashing head-on into a stone wall.

Dr Wolfe, in this prison, saw many prisoners, who bore marks of torture in the famous Dachau camp. Some were blind. One man. whose sight was recovering, said he was placed in a chair propped up by bayonets and compelled to stare into a powerful electric bulb. When he shut his eyes he received a blow on the face from the flat of a bayonet. If he dropped his head he was prodded on the chin with a bayonet point. Day and night he was forced to stare into the bulb until he became almost blind. This man was told that bis eyelids would be cut off if he shut them —a threat which was carried out on another man. Dr Wolfe knew others permanently blinded by this form of torture. For attempting to escape, Dr Wolfe was placed in an asylum among raving lunatics. Later he was taken to a police punishment camp where he found that every third or fourth man was a Gestapo or Questure (Italian Gestapo) spy, whose duty it was to induce prisoners to talk. Two men who spoke contemptuously of Hitler and Mussolini were sentenced to life imprisonment.