Harrowing details of the mistreatment of Belgian Jewish children by the Nazi occupation authorities who have confined them in a concentration camp at Malines, Belgium, are revealed in the underground newspaper L’Alouette, a copy of which was received today by Belgian circles here.
The clandestine paper says that the children are mainly those who were left with non-Jewish friends by their parents before the latter were deported to Germany or Poland. As soon as the Gestapo had completed the deportation of the adults, however, they rounded up the children from the numerous foster homes and placed them in barracks at the Malines camp.
L’Allouette writes that the conditions under which the children, who range in age from six upwards, live are “abominable.” Besides the filth and general discomfort of their living quarters, they are frequently whipped by there Nazi guards. Beatings are administered for the slightest infraction of the rules.
Although the children are nominally supposed to receive food at the camp, actually they subsist on what can be sent into them by persons in the neighborhood. Even this food, the underground paper asserts, is frequently appropriated by the German camp officials. “These details will serve as further documentation of the study of German barbarity in our times,” L’Allouette concludes.
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