KILLED BY NAZIS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 18, 27 October 1942, Page 5

KILLED BY NAZIS

400,000 POLES LETTERS OF A GERMAN OFFI- - AND PLUNDERER The letters of a German officer to his: cousin published in a London paper shows what a blight the iron grey slugs are ill Poland. These letiers were written by Lieut. Toll to his cousin. lin his first letter he boasts of what the Germans did to Warsaw, "this city of dogs., slaves and Slavs"; lie says it is all very well for hypocritical Britons to pretend that it is cruel to make Avar on civilians!, but Germans throw as terrible a weight of vengeance upon civilians as "because it breaks their morale, proves the power of the 'Herrenvolk' and saves lives by shortening the war.'* To quote this German officer: "We tried it here, we spared nobody and nothing. Wherever we saw a Polish head, we struck it regardless of whether it was black or grey, male or female. AVe mowed them down from the air with machine guns as they scuttled for shelter. Whenever" a Pole came our way, we wiped him or her out." This choice young barbarian Was gjven a billet, in the house of' an old lady who had lost, her left hand in one of the German air raids; on the capital. How he treated her is told in this letter he wrote to hsis cousin: "I meant to have sent you a set of red and white ivory chessmen, but enclose instead, a wrist watch. Madame Apolonja had the set of chessmen and I; expressed a desire for them. Next day I demanded them, but they were gone. She said burglars must have broken 'in and stolen them. You may rest assured I examined the place carefully but found no chessmen, only in an inlaid wooden box I discovered this gold wrist watch, together with a man's ■ ruby ring. You would have laughed to see this old she-Pole going down on her knees and asking to be allowed to keep the watch and ring which she says belonged to some son or other who was killed. At last, upon my word, she dug out a hundred and fifty American dollars in lieu of these articles. I; took both the dollars and the articles.®*

A few days later, Lieut. Toll wrote another letter: "I write you from a bed of pain. It. happened in Marsazalkowska. We had been warned not to go out alone after dark. Many of our officers and men have been foully murdered. I liad been at a cafe with a friend, but left a little early because I found that Polish vodka goes to the head rather too quickly. Just outside the cafe,, not more than a hundred yards away,, a man. whose face I could not see sfttiid: 'Lieutenant Toll?' I said 'Yes,' and then he shot me in the left side. People came but. he was gone. iMy landlady and her family were ques-» tioned; and denied complicity, but they were shot. I. am very sick now. Heil Hitler, Yours, Friedrich." Official German report: Lieptenant Friedrich Toll died to-day as a result of Avounds inflicted by an unknown terrorist. Mr Mikolajczyk, Polish Minister of the Interior, laid a most damning report, on German atrocities in Poland" before a Press Conference at the British Ministry of Information. The report ended with an appeal received by General Sikorski, Polish Prime Minister, from one of the leaders of the underground movement in Poland.