AXIS ATROCITIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 March 1943, Page 3

AXIS ATROCITIES

PROTEST BY CHURCH LEADERS IN YUGOSLAVIA BARBAROUS DESTRUCTION OF VILLAGES. WOMEN & CHILDREN KILLED IN CHURCHES. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON. March 16. Croatin and Dalmatian Church leaders have protested to the Axis authorities against atrocities which have been committed. An order was issued by the German commander in Croatia in February that all resistance, even passive, was punishable without trial by death, and that villages harbouring rebels or where arms were discovered should be wiped out. Thirty-one villages have already been destroyed in one district under this order. Archbishop Stepinac, of Zagreb, has protested to the Italian Minister, stating: ‘ ‘I protest most energetically against the unheard-of atrocities which have been perpetuated by Italian troops, who have burnt down villages on the pretext that the inhabitants were Communists.” The Bishop of Sibenik, in a protest to the Italian Governor of Dalmatia, declared, “Those who have fled to the forest are not Communists. They have fled in fear of the Italians, who are even entering churches .and killing women and children in them with the utmost cruelty. Nevertheless, these Italians want to be regarded as good Catholics.”