STREETS DESERTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 April 1941, Page 5

STREETS DESERTED

DURING GERMAN MARCH INTO SALONIKA DOORS BARRED & BLINDS DRAWN. FIFTH COLUMNISTS THREATEN JEWS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, April 12. The Germans marched into Salonika through deserted streets. Every door was barred and every blind drawn as a sign of protest for the million inhabitants who are cut off there and in the rest of Thrace from the remainder of Greece, Almost all the men had previously left the city.

The military governor of Salonika during the last hours of freedom plastered the walls with notices calling on all able-bodied persons to take up arms.

When modern rifles ran out, old models were issued, and the lastcomers .received only revolvers and swords. This improvised Home Guard marched out to harry the panzer divisions coming down the Vardar Valley. After their departure men and women dug shelters and did everything necessary to improve the city’s defences, but the rumble of guns came nearer, whereupon the women shut themselves in their houses. Refugees from Thrace and Macedonia began to pour in and guards combed the new-comers for German agents. The worst sufferers of the German occupation will be 50,060 Jews. Fifth Columnists have already told them that they will bo uprooted from their homes.