NAZI CRIMES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 January 1942, Page 3

NAZI CRIMES

WHOLESALE ATROCITIES IN RUSSIA DENOUNCED IN SOVIET NOTE. TERRIBLE EXAMPLES CITED. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, January 6. The Moscow radio says that the Foreign Commissar, M. Molotov, has presented a Note to the representatives of all the countries with which the Soviet has diplomatic relations regarding the wholesale looting, destruction and atrocities committed by the Germans in the territory which the Russians have since recaptured.

There was incontrovertible evidence that the German acts were not those of separate undisciplined military units or individuals but done according to a previously prepared plan fostered by the German Government and High Command. The Note declared that every step by the German army and its allies in Soviet territory was marked by the imposition upon the peaceful population of hard labour, hunger and bloody tortures, “in comparison with which the most terrible crimes in human history pale into insignificance.” The Note quotes an order, which was captured in the Orel district, instructing German troops to convert every evacuated town or zone into a desert. In carrying out this order the retreating invaders are blowing up and burning houses, municipal centres, libraries, factories, schools, hospitals and churches, the Note declares. MASSACRE IN KIEV. Fifty-two thousand men and women —anybody loyal to the Soviet—were killed in Kiev in a few days. Large numbers of Jews were lined up at the Jewish cemetery and told to lie down whereupon they were shot with automatic weapons and their bodies covered with earth. Another batch was brought up and treated similarly and immediately buried over the previous victims. Eight thousand inhabitants were shot in Kamenets-Podolsk and 3000 mostly old men and children, in Mariupol. Several thousand more were shot in Kerch. Tens of thousands were killed in Rostov. On one occasion the Germans slaughtered 60 inhabitants on the pavement in the main street. The Note quotes examples of the German employment of peaceful inhabitants as cover for German troops in battles against the Red Army, and it adds, “There is no limit to the bloodthirstiness and cruelty of the German invaders. Hitler’s armies are waging no ordinary war but a murderous war of extermination against peaceful men, women and children.” WHOLE QUARTERS WRECKED. There were thousands of cases of robberies from industrial undertakings: Whole quarters in cities like Novgorod, Kharkov, Rostov and Kalinin had been wrecked, while towns like Istra and Rogachev were a mass of ruins. The Note declared that the Germans razed hundreds of villages in the Ukraine, White Russia. Leningrad and other regions. In a village in the Tula region 960 houses out of 998 were destroyed and 554 of 602 destroyed in another village. The Germans applied paraffn to houses in a village in the Moscow area before setting them on fire and then shelled the village when the inhabitants attempted to quench the flames. After reporting many other examples of German atrocities, the Note declared that the Soviet people would never forget nor forgive them. “The Government lays all the responsibility for these ruthless, inhuman and rapa-’ cious acts by the German troops on the criminal Hitlerite Government of Germany,” it adds. The “Daily Mail’s” diplomatic correspondent says M. Molotov’s Note declared, first, that Germany must be disarmed and made incapable of aggression; secondly, that Germany must be made to endure suffering equal to Russia’s; and thirdly, that Germany must rebuild all that she destroyed. "The Soviet Government wishes to make the position clear so that there shall be no misunderstanding after victory,” the Note explained. ALLIED ACTION MEETING IN LONDON NEXT WEEK. LONDON, January 7. Representatives of all the Allied Governments will meet in London next week for the purpose of cataloguing German crimes in occupied Europe. , Arrangements for the meeting had been made before M. Molotov's Note about atrocities was presented. The initiative for the meeting is coming from the Governments established in London whose countries have been overrun, says the “Daily Mail's” diplomatic correspondent, namely Poland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Norway, Greece. Holland and Yugoslavia.