WAR PRISONERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 April 1942, Page 4

WAR PRISONERS

TREATMENT OF OFFICERS IN GERMANY FAVOURABLE RED CROSS REPORT. SERVICES FROM INDIA & LONDON. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Conditions in a German camp for officers have been disclosed by a delegate to the International Red Cross Committee at Geneva who visited Oflag VI B on December 9. The Prisoners of War Inquiry Office has been informed that the camp held 2,500 British officers and 470 orderlies, and that some unsatisfactory features discovered were immediately taken up with the German authorities, who gave assurances that improvements would at once-be made. In January, it is slated, the improvements had already been started. Two hundred senior officers were being transferred to a new camp and 400 airmen were also to be transferred in that month. Ten new brick barracks were being built and it was reported that food parcels were abundant and that there was a very large stock in reserve. The prisoners were looking very fit and those from Greece and Crete had greatly improved in health.

The office states that India has undertaken to send 1,000 parcels of food a week through the International Red Cross for British prisoners of war. The High Commissioner’s Office in London states that there is a pound and a half of chocolate in every quarterly parcel. Articles in these parcels are purchased at manufacturers' prices, but even so, and with purchase tax avoided, they cost about £3 12s each. The service in London will stop, but will be taken up again immediately any new prisoners are officially notified as such. The number of prisoners notified is now: Army, 5,852; Air Force, 132; Navy, 7; merchant seamen and civilians, 26; miscellaneous, 25; unofficial, 36. The total was reduced this week by the names of 29 repatriated men.