TERROR WAVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 December 1943, Page 4

TERROR WAVE

SLAUGHTER OF POLES ATTEMPT TO OBLITERATE CRIMES LONDON, November 5. The Polish Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Banaczyk, issued the following statement to the press relative to the new German terror wave in Poland: “The new terror wave sweeping through the whole of Poland is on the largest scale ever organised by Germans in Poland. The occupants, realising that the term of their authority may now be a question of months, have determined to clear out Poland more quickly for their own purposes by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Poles. The new mass cruelties include manhunts in the streets of Warsaw and other Polish cities on an enormous scale and the callous shooting of many hostages in the streets of the Polish capital as reprisal for the killing of German officials. Simultaneously the Gestapo headquarters have issued instructions to destroy documents relating .to the interrogation of persons under torture, to the execution of victims, and for a large scale exhumation of bodies of victims which are to be cremated in order to obliterate all traces of crimes.” The Polish Minister concludes: “Out of it the terrible truth emerges only too clearly. In Poland at' this moment the most appalling crimes, which the Germans have ever committed, are taking place. They are increasing with every passing day and the ultimate limit cannot be estimated. They are dictated by a panic and fear of the Germans in face of their approaching defeat. Even if they lose the war they mean to win it in Poland by murder, publicly in the streets, covertly in prison, traces being concealed with true German efficiency. This being the state of things it is necessary that the indignation of the whole world should be heard by the Germans in Poland even through the walls of German propaganda, so that the cowardly assassins of thousands of innocent and defenceless people should tremble. It should be so strong that the tools of torture should drop from their hands.”