ITALIAN ATROCITIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 64, 18 March 1943, Page 5

ITALIAN ATROCITIES

PROTEST Bi DALMATIAN CHURCH LEADERS Recd. 9 p.m. London, March 16. Croatian and Dalmation Churcn leaders protested to the Axis authorities against atrocities and the order by the German commander in Croatia in February that all resistance, even passive, was punishable without trial by death, and that villages harbouring rebels or where arms were discovered should be wiped out. Thirty-one villages have already been destroyed in one district under this order. Zagreb’s Archbishop Stepinac protested to the Italian Minister: “I protest most energetically against the unheard-of atrocities perpetrated by Italian troops, who burnt down villages on the pretext that the inhabitants were Communists.” The Bishop of Sibenik protested to the Italian governor of Dalmatia: “Those who fled Io the forest are no’ Communists. They fled in fear of ‘he Italians, who are even entering ‘hutches and killing women and children in them with the utmost cruelty. Nevertheless these Italians want to be regarded as good Catholics.”