NAPLES HORROR

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 10, 7 October 1943, Page 5

NAPLES HORROR

Account Of Recent German Actions

CROWDS’'BLOWN UP IN BUILDINGS

(British Official Wireless and Press Assn.) LONDON, October 5.

German savagery reached incredible depths in the five days of terror before the evacuation of Naples, says the United Press correspondent in Naples. The Germans must have realized that all hope of holding Naples had gone, and did their worst in the time left to them. They killed and wounded thousands of people, set fire to buildings ami dynamited others, blew up reservoirs, and polluted the water supply. The hospitals are now filled with wounded men, women, and children. The dead ine one hospital were piled up in one huge room, and the scene there is indescribable. Cemeteries are being made in some of the parks. The Germans attacked the hospitals, knowing that they had supplies of food, water, and drugs. The staff of one hospital, with rifles and machineguns, fought off the Germans. A large number of Italians were rounded up and herded into buildings, and German sentries held them in while mines wereilaid underneath and exploded. The Germans set fire to Naples University. which is a burned-out shell. They also tried to bum the Opera House. Many most valuable works of art, including famous paintings, were burnt or destroyed. The Neapolitans told correspondents other grim stories of the Germans utter disregard of Italian life and property. At the main telephone exchange, which the Germans demolished, a patrol m carabinieri tried to save the building by resisting, nnd in the course of a scuttle four Germans were shot. For this the Germans said 12 of the carabinieri must die. They arrested the next patrol, and marched them to a place of execution, ordering all Italians in the area to follow and witness the shooting. Similar terror tactics wert adopted when the Germans shot sailors from a fortress near the harbour for resisting them. The correspondents were informed that nearly a thousand Neapolitans were compelled to stand at the entrance of the university buildings while a sailor who had attacked a German was shot at the top of the steps. _ , ' Six of the largest hotels in Naples were either set on fire °r iblown utp <by the Germans when they left. There is hardly a shop along the Via Roma or the Corso Umberto, two of the main streets, which has not been looted. In. fact, correspondents say, the Neapolitans are more resentful of the vandalism of the Germans than of the destruction caused by the Allied bombing. Evidence of this ibombing is apparent in the dock areas. 'On the other hand, the museum suffered no damage beyond broken windows, and the great cathedral showed only a small ipart of the facing of one pillar blown away by bomb blast. The residential areas are largely undamaged. .