SOLE SURVIVOR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 June 1942, Page 3

SOLE SURVIVOR

FROM NAZI MASSACRE AT LIDICE TRYING TO MAKE HIS WAY TO ENGLAND. DECLARATION BY DR. BENES. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, June 13. The Czech Foreign Minister, M. Jan Masaryk, stated in Boston, Massachusetts, today, that he had reliable information that one man had escaped alive from Lidice, the Czechoslovak village razed by the Germans. The man is now trying to make his way to England so that he can give the world an eyewitness’s acount of the horrors. The Prague radio today announced that another 24 Czechs, including a woman octogenarian, were executed in Prague and Brno for the attack on Heydrich, making a total of 382 (excluding the executed men of Lidice). The Czech President, Dr. Benes, broadcasting from London to his countrymen, declared that all those responsible in Czechoslovakia, from Hitler down to the Stormtroop leaders, will be shot after the war in accordance with Czech military law. The Kuibyshev radio broadcast a report from Stockholm that Hitler suffered a nervous breakdown after he heard of the attack against Heydrich. He did not leave his room for two days, and after his recovery he ordered a purge of the Gestapo for failing to guard Heydrich and demanded the extermination of all Czech intellectuals.

USEFUL MATERIAL 4 — WAR DEMAND FOR SHELLAC. PRODUCT OF TINY INSECT. One hundred tins of bully beef can be coated with the shellac used in the recording of a sonata (of, say, four 12 inch records) for the gramophone. And, as shellac has a place in almost every branch of Britain’s work for the war, British production of gramophone records has been promptly cut down as the war effort keeps speeding up. Made as a protective covering by a tiny Indian insect only one-thirtieth of an inch long, shellac is the only natural resin produced by animal agency. Thirty thousand tons of it are being used every year in scores of industries ranging from tank production to dentistry. Latest of all developments is its part as an important constituent in a new “dope” for giving aeroplanes greater weather resistance. But this is only one of the 63 new uses which Britain, India and America have found for shellac in the past ten years. An ideal adhesive for joining metal parts, it sticks together the rotor segments in gyroscopic compasses and coats petrol containers in aircraft and tanks. It also protects fuses, detonators and charges for shells, bombs and mines, and it is used in Bengal flares and signal lights and rockets. About 60 per cent of all the shellac produced goes in protective varnishes for machinery, electrical equipment, footwear and service caps, photographic materials, wood, paper, metal and fabrics for paints, inks and even for coating pills. To provide as much shellac as possible for these war uses some other peace time products which need it — nail varnish, hair dye, metal foil for cheese and playing cards —will have to go by the board.