A GRIM STORY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 28, 28 November 1944, Page 7

A GRIM STORY

.1! FIENDISH NAZI NEW ORDER f , i

TORTURE CHAMBERS IN PARIS

rf jou look over Paris from a hilltop like Mount Valerien, where the German red, white and ])lack sentry boxes stand empty outside Die gates of the old fort, or if on a sunny dav you go on a journey of rediscovery along its spacious avenues, it seems <i'most unthinkable that not. .so many days ago all Ihis fairness cloaked some of Ihe most atrocious crimes committed by the Gestapo, backed . up by the traitors, of Dalian's mili--1 i;i , sa ys a special correspondent of The Times, London. During the years the ceaseless, hidden struggle between French patriots and the Gestapo -moved to its relentless end; hut 50,000 lives in Paris, and at least 200,000 in the whole of France, was the price of insistence, and only the dead could tell all the grim story. More than one elegant mansion in the. Avenue Foeh contained the padtied torture chambers, of the Gestapo, Avhich-had its headquarters in a laige building in the Hue des Saus'sies ? formerly a branch of the Surctc Generale, whose detailed .archives no doubt served the Germans well. There today, in a little room on the top lloor, I saw the simple-look-ing bath in which prisoners of the Gestapo were immersed in ice-cold water until they lost consciousness; there are other rooms with four stakes driven in the wall to which victims were tied, and the electrical devices, with which thc.y were tortured. Not many who were hotught to the Rue de Saussies went out whole, and some were dead by the time they arrived at a prison hospital. Yet if you go into one of the tiny ceils the air seems to be permeated | by the courage of those who passed through it. The walls are, covered with inscriptions, some of them the last words { left by these people and all of them arc full of an unwavering determination not to speak. The courage and faith of these people, men and women were unbreakable; even when the Germans crushed an eye and threatened to do the same to the other if they did not speak. The quiet, almost shy bearing of Mile. Alix d'Unienville, whom \ met completely belied her hardihood. She is only 25 and half English, After undergoing,* a cottrs'e of parachute training near Chester she dropped from a Halifax April to jtoin General de Gaulle's underground delegation in France, and, with a knowledge of most of their secrets, was picked up more, or less « accidentally by the Gestapo. The Germans did not recognisc. their find, for she was submitted, to onlja perfunctory interrogation and .slipped away from the guards who were taking 2500 prisoners into Germany. At Fersnes she I'eined madness and was taken to La Pitie, where she heard the story of a Polish woman whose body was battered and broken from unspeakable, tortures. After being beaten up and plunged into the ice-bath this woman was. taken blinjl-folded to* a house near n the Etoile. Each new form of torture was given a number "and before proceeding from one to another her executioners would describe in detail what was to come next, if she. did not speak. She remained steadfast up to No. 8, and was then taken to the room of the commander, who was eating a meal in bed, and remained for hours with her hands manacled to her ankles. When it was thought that she could bear no nwe it was found that the. gaoler possessing the key to the handcuffs had gone off on an errand and she remained in this agonising position throughout the night. When Mile. d'Unienville met her in hospital she was almost unrecognisable as a human being. This is the sort of thing that has been going on fri Paris under the Xjerman new order.