NO MERCY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 October 1938, Page 7

NO MERCY

HENLEIN & HIS POLITICAL OPPONENTS REFUGEES BEING ROUNDED UP. HANDED BACK TO OCCUPIED AREA. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. LONDON, October 12. The Prague correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” says that, despite Czech assurances that democratic German or Jewish refugees from the Sudetenland would not be obliged to return to their homes, it is estimated that 20,000 have already been driven back with the utmost severity into the territory from which they fled to escape the fate which has now unquestionably befallen them. That fate was clearly indicated by Herr Henlein, broadcasting on October 8, when he said that his political opponents did not deserve mercy and would receive none. “We shall imprison them until they turn back,” he said. “All who have fled and have subsequently been returned will be treated in the same way.” Herr Kessler, Democratic Sudeten German mayor of Bodenbach, declares that many of these Democratic refugees are being mercilessly transported to the German occupied areas. ' At some centres, such as Pilsem and Kladno, they are being rounded up at the bayonet point, herded into trucks and sent back to their fate. More than 100,000 German refugees are encamped, near Prague, the total throughout the country being between a quarter and half a million.