ROUNDING UP GESTAPO

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 22612, 18 May 1945, Page 3

ROUNDING UP GESTAPO

MANY ARRESTS IN GERMANY LONDON. May 17 Police and the Public Safety Department are hard on the track of the Gestapo organisation and are rounding up “fairly substantial numbers” of Gestapo officials throughout the area occupied by the British Second Army, says Reuter’s correspondent at 21st Army Group Headquarters. Simultaneously, British authorities are freeing Hitler’s political prisoners from gaol and building up a new German police force under British supervision. The British 'are showing no mercy to Germans convicted of carrying arms or other capital offences. Colonel H. E. George, a staff officer of the Military Government, stated that 12 death sentences had been passed thus far and others were coming in fairly rapidly from outlying areas. All the death sentences were subject to confirmation from the Com-mander-in-Chief, after which the convicted persons faced a. firing squad.

At Celle conditions equalled the horror of any thus far found. The Allies released immediately 53 Germans and 49 non-Germans of 110 examined, and put the former German Governor and 15 of his staff in the cells formerly occupied by the victims.