DEPTHS OF SAVAGERY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 October 1943, Page 4

DEPTHS OF SAVAGERY

REACHED BY GERMANS DURING LAST DAYS IN NAPLES WHOLESALE MURDER, THEFT AND DESTRUCTION. HOSPITALS SINGLED OUT FOR ATTACK (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.55 a.m.) LONDON, October 5. German savagery reached incredible depths in the five days of terror before the evacuation of Naples, says a British United Press correspondent in Naples. The Germans must have realised that their hcpe of holding Naples had gone, and they did their worst in the time left to them. They killed and wounded thousands of people, set fire to buildings, dynamited others, blew up reservoirs, and polluted the water supply. The hospitals' are now filled with wounded men, women and children. The dead in one hospital are piled up in one huge room. The scene there is indiscribable. Cemeteries are being made in some of the parks. The Germans attacked hospitals, knowing tnat they had sunolies of food, water and drugs. The staff of one hospital manned rifles and machine-guns and fought off the Germans. A large number of Italians were rounded up and herded into buildings. German sentries held them in, while mines were laid underneath and exploded. The Germans set fire to Naples University, which is a burned-out shell. They tried to set fire to the Ooera House. Many of the most valuable’works of art, including famous paintings, were burned or destroyed. FEROCIOUS CRIMES. Neapolitans describing the last days of the German occupation of Naples (a British Official Wireless . message states) told correspondents grim stories of utter disregard for Italian life and property by the former Axis partners. For instance, at the main teelphone exchange, which the Germans demolished, a patrol of Carabinieri tried to save the building by resisting, and in the course of a scuffle four Germans were shot. For this the Germans said twelve of the Caribineri must die. They arrested the next patrol and marched them to the place of execution, ordering all Italians in the area to follow and witness the shooting. Similar terror tactics were adopted when the Germans shot sailors from a fortress near the harbour for resisting them. Correspondents were informed that nearly a thousand Neapolitans were compelled to stand at the entrance to the University buildings while a sailor who had attacked a German was shot at the top of the steps. Six of the largest hotels in Naples were either set on fire' or blown up by the Germans when they left. There was hardly a shop along the Via Rome or Corso Umberto, two of the main streets,-which had not been looted. In fact, correspondents say, Neapolitans are more resentful of the vandalism of the Germans than of the destruction caused by Allied bombings. Evidences of this bombing are apparent in the dock areas. On the other hand, the Museum suffered no damage beyond broken windows, and the great Cathedral showed only a small part of the facing of one pillar blown away by blast. Residential areas were largely undamaged.