NAZI ATROCITIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 November 1939, Page 6

NAZI ATROCITIES

TESTIMONY OF BRITISH

BARRISTERS BASED ON EVIDENCE OF REFUGEES. AT LEAST SEVEN MEN MURDERED ON ONE TRAIN. (British Official Wlrelcss.l (Received This Day. 12.30 p.m.) RUGBY. November 1. Six eminent barristers, including SilGeorge Bonner, late Senior Master of the Supreme Court and King's Remembrancer, Mr Tristram Beresford, K.C., Mr Trevor Hunter, K.C., Sir Charles Odgers, and M John H. Thorpe, K.C., who determined in Home Office tribunals the status of 3600 Jewish refugees from Germany, wrote to “The Times” corroborating the White Paper statements concerning Nazi brutality. The barristers state that their investigations brought to light so much corroboration of evidence of gross illtreatment that they "think it right to make public some of the facts proved to our satisfaction. We have only accepted allegations corroborated and in our opinion proved. Witnesses told their stories with obvious reluctance, being afraid in the event of identification, of reprisals against their relatives still in Germany. “Accounts of journeys by rail to prison or concentration camp were almost unbelievable. On one specific journey, of which there is abundant. evidence, three men in on wagon were •shot and their bodies thrown out of a window because they complained of the heat. On this journey we are satisfied that at least seven men were murdered. “On arrival at the concentration camp, young and old had to run between ranks of Black Guards who beat them on the shoulders with stocks, or prodded them with bayonets. "We were told of old men falling down and being kicked on the ground. A. doctor who worked for six months in a concentration camp, put the mortality rate in this period at 10 per cent; Of these, 15 per cent died from injuries, and the remainder mostly from pneumonia and diphtheria.” The letter describes varieties of punishments inflicted for trivial offences. One was to make a prisoner stand with his chin well forward and play a jet of water continuously on his face. Every time the victim, from discomfort or exhaustion, lowered his chin, a sentry struck him violently. Others were made to crawl naked over broken granite.