NAZI BESTIALITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1943, Page 3

NAZI BESTIALITY

CAMPAIGN OF ATROCITY IN GABES MOLESTATION OF WOMEN. ROBBERY AND MALTREATMENT OF JEWS. SYDNEY, April 8. When the Eighth Army eventually entered Gabes it saw what the Germans do to a town, reports the “Sydney Morning Herald’s” war correspondent in Tunisia. It was the first time British soldiers saw Nazi bestiality for themselves. They wondered, when they entered this French town, why women ran to kiss them and men clapped and stood up unashamed in the streets with tears streaming down their cheeks. Now they know and are ■ fighting mad about it. i The Germans were in Gabes four months. In that time they looted, destroyed, took French and Arab leaders away as hostages, beat Jews, robbed homes and banks at pistol point, attempted to molest women, and instituted such a regime of terrorism that finally even their Italian allies were sickened by it and Italian officers intervened with a threat of force to protect the townspeople. BLASTING INDICTMENT. Let Monsieur Marcel Giraud, police chief of Gabes, tell the story:— “The first Germans came on November 20, 1942,” he told the correspondent. “It had been a happy town till then. There was plenty of food and our children played in the sun. But the Germans and Italians had no food. Rapidly they ate the countryside bare. “Soon the Gestapo got to work. Our Mayor, Monsieur Rene Stable, was arrested and taken away. They had nothing against him except that he was a good Frenchman. They tried to prove that his wife was a Jewess. They could not, but they smashed up her home and insulted her just the same. Twenty other leading citizens and the 'chief of the Arabs in the town were taken away, too, and we have not heard of them since. “Then, one day recently, the Gestapo circulated the names of women in the town whose husbands or menfolk were still fighting for France. That dreadful night, German soldiers, many of them drunk, ravaged through the town attempting to molest women who had been named. “Mothers sent their children running to me for help. I got my gendarmes , together. The Germans had disarmed us. We had not much hope; but the Italian carabiniere had heard about it, too. Of their own accord they came with us, and, with carbines levelled, drove the Germans out into the streets again. All that night and for many nights afterward we stood guard with the Italian police over our womenfolk. “In the Jewish quarter the Germans rioted as they pleased. We could not do anything to help the Jews. Jewish homes were ransacked. It was a great joke for these louts to trip old men and tear their clothing. There were 3500 Jews in Gabes, and I do not think one escaped hurt of some sort. TOWN SMASHED & LOOTED. “Then they started methodically to smash up our town for bricks, stone, timber and steel needed to strengthen the Mareth Line. Doors,’ window frames, shutters, were torn from buildings. Then houses and other buildings were dynamited. “In the last nightmare days, every bit of machinery, every vehicle, every bicycle even, was taken away. German soldiers robbed and looted at pistolpoint. Nazi officials went to the town’s three banks and, with drawn revolvers, confiscated a million and- a quarter French francs, the total deposits belonging to Jews. “The power station was destroyed, radios were smashed, and even candles were taken from us in that last wild orgy of pillage . Then they went, and we commenced to live again.” After the British Eighth Army entered the town, the burning ,of a book in the town square was a symbolic ceremony which marked the town’s.return to freedom. It was a “Domesday Book” in which the Germans had recorded the name of every adult Frenchman in the town. Every day those Frenchmen had had to queue up to report so that the Gestapo could keep check on them. There would be no need for that any more. ' A few hours later, in the town

square, French officers were recruiting eligible Frenchmen of Gabes for General Leclerc’s force. I do not envy the Germans who have to fight these men.