CRUELTY ALLEGED

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 23013, 3 October 1944, Page 5

CRUELTY ALLEGED

Bulgarian Prison Camp (7.30 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 2. Many Allied airmen died in a Bulgarian priosner of war camp from negligence and cruelty, alleges an Allied air sergeant who has arrived in Cairo from Bulgaria. He has signed a sworn statement describing conditions in the camp. The airman told the Cairo correspondent of the British United Press: “I saw a fellow prisoner operated on for stomach injuries. Immediately after the operation the attendant jerked him into a sitting position. The stitches burst, and he fell back dead. Another prisoner who had head Injuries was put into solitary confinement for four days without medical aid. He also died. Two hundred Allied prisoners were kept in a room intended for 50 persons.” A sergeant who was wounded in the foot when shot down over Bulgaria said that prison doctors operated on him without an anaesthetic. “When I screamed, the nurse struck me. During the operation a Bulgarian officer came into the room and said: 'You bombed Sofia,’ and hit me in the face with the butt of his gun. The doctor laughed at the incident. My foot developed gangrene, and I had to undergo another operation."