FLIGHT FROM COLOGNE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 June 1942, Page 4

FLIGHT FROM COLOGNE

AND OTHER BOMBED CITIES REPORTED DISCLOSURES BY ABETZ. SCENES OF DEVASTATION & HORROR. 4 (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.45 p.m.) LONDON, June 14. Herr Abetz, Hitler’s agent in Paris, last week told his immediate Vichy collaborators that the Cologne devastation was so great after the R.A.F. raid that the evacuations already exceed 250,000 of a total population of 760,000. “The Times” correspondent on the French frontier, reporting this, says this is believed to explain why the German Labour Front last week ordered a census of dwelling accommodation throughout the Reich, with authority to force families to take in homeless people. It is officially stated that evacuations from Lubeck were 30,000 and from Rostock 80,000. Herr Abetz said it was impossible accurately to estimate Cologne’s death roll, because an unknown number were still under the ruins. The German Government believed that the deaths totalled between 11,000 and 15,000, with, twice that number injured. In addition to houses gutted many were unsafe and must be destroyed. Herr Abetz said the population was turbulent over the inadequate protection against raids. Powerful R.A.F. bombs pulverised even reinforced concrete shelters thirty feet below the surface of the ground. Hundreds were suffocated and hundreds were killed through the pulping of their lungs by the stupendous air pressure. Others, with overstrung nerves from the long privations of the war, had become insane and their violence was demoralising to witness.