"GIBBERED LIKE APES."

Taranaki Daily News, 1 May 1919, Page 8

"GIBBERED LIKE APES."

SUFFERINGS 0F SERBIANS. An officer of the British Army who was taken prisoner by the Bulgars and interned in Bulgaria has furnished the Serbian Consul in Salonika with information concerning outrages on their Serbian prisoners. ' , "In September I arrived in the George Panikharevo, where the very worst samples of modern barbarism occurred during the first week of ray stay. We saw twenty-seven Serbian soldiers and interned civilians flogged, by order of Lieutenant, Samardjiev. They were flogged before the Bulgarian battalion because three of their comrades had escaped. Their flesh looked like raw meat. Throughout the winter there was no fire in the barracks, and many died of cold. All these men were either sick or crippled and maimed men, who were unable to work Still, the Buisars made them work by the help of blows with a stick. "I was once inside the Fifth Barracks, and there I saw a spectacle that no artist could paint and no writer describe. The Serbs had nearly ail gone n.ftd witli sickness and starvation. They gibbered like apes. The spectacle was isO horrible that, although I am a medical student and accustomed to disgusting sights, I had to come out after 20 minutes of it. . "Later on, in the beginning of April,, more interned persons were brought from Serbia. About 4000 of them name to the camps, and it was there that nameless atrocities began in earnest. The Bulgars confined 1 050 persons in barTacks 30 metres long by 10 metres* wide. All day long you heard the sound of blows of sticks, frequently given in the face. During the night the Bnlgars ivould fire at the prisoners. In the month of May the camp, had become nothing loss than a typhus hospital, with-., doctors, it is true, but, as if by accident, deprived of all drugs and primary necessaries for the sick. I should need a thousand pages to relate all the atrocities—so many did I witness."