FEARS FOR GREECE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 64, 17 March 1942, Page 5

FEARS FOR GREECE

THOUSANDS PERISH MASSACRE AND STARVATION London, March 15. Between 150,000 and 200,000 Greeks have perished as a result of the Axis occupation of Greece —massacred, executed, and died of starvation and disease due to malnutrition. The Cairo correspondent of the Associated Press says that this figure was given him by local Greek ollicials on the basis of accounts by escapees. Ollicials fear that unless some effective way is found to get more adequate relief to Greece, half the population of 7,QUO,QUO may be dead before the war is ended. The peak figure for deaths from starvation and malnutrition in Athens was reached in February, when the intense wave of cold augmented the suffering from lack of food and fuel. Fifteen hundred people died daily in the Athens and Piraeus area. Many people stand in line all day to get a ration of four ounces of hard black broad in which maize, rice, and chestnut flour are mixed. One escapee said that, the infant mortality in Athens is appalling. A park in the centre of the city has been converted into a cemetery because so many people die in the centre of the city and there is no transport to take them to suburban cemeteries.