I ANOTHER LIDICE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 23029, 21 October 1944, Page 7

I ANOTHER LIDICE

Bulgar-German Atrocities LONDON, October 18. The horrors of another Lidice—this time in Greece—were revealed by Archbishop Damascinos in a talk to a corrsepondent in Athens. Eighty Germans had been killed in the village of Karlavirita, he said, and the Germans decided to destroy the whole population. They gathered every man, woman and child (the population was about 1000) in the square in the centre of the village. They told all the males over the age of 14 to kneel down. All the women and children were removed to a school building on the other side of the square, from where they could see all that went on. The men and boys were then machine-gunned where they knelt, and the school buildings were set on fire. For about 10 minutes babies could be seen falling from the windows as their mothers threw them out in a desperate eSort to spare them the gruesome fate of being burned. Eventually, said the Archbishop, a German officer, who could not stand the horrible scene, rushed up and broke open the doors. It was too late. Very few of the women escaped. Greece Almost Killed Archbishop Damascinos added that the destruction carried out by the Germans in the south and by the Bulgarians in the north had almost killed Greece. “If the Bulgarians are not punished for their crimes, I will declare publicly that there is no justice on this earth,” he went on. In all, the Germans had destroed more than 2000 townships, and to-day more than 3000 families in Athens were being cared for under his authority, because the father or breadwinner had been executed. “Fifteen days ago at one place 100 women and children were shot by the Germans and their homes were burned down because one German had been wounded,” he said. “The Germans also started the custom of surrounding the churches during the services and killing all the male members of the congregation over the age of 14. “The atrocities committed by the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace were even worse. In those territories more than 50,000 Greeks have been massacred. An attempt was made to reduce the Greek population to such an extent that the Bulgarians would no longer be in the minority.”