Progress Report (Mid-Century)

In Liege, Belgium, behind the ancient walls of Liege University, the world's foremost authorities on medical criminology gathered to report their latest findings. There was so much to tell that the lectures, being delivered in three rooms simultaneously, had to be limited; every five minutes, an alarm clock rang to silence a speaker.

Dr. Jean Fourcade of Strasbourg, a specialist, demonstrated a new method of ascertaining the respective positions of killed and killer in murders where a pistol is fired through a windowpane. Dr. Muller of Lille spoke on "Encouraging Toxicomania with the View of Inheriting Money." He cited the case of a British peer whose addiction to morphine had been fatally nurtured by his greedy relatives. The most striking report was made by four Yugoslav doctors on war crimes.

Professor A. Premeru of Zagreb listed the following:

P: Public hanging from the "coat rack" gallows, allowing 30 executions at the same time. These scenes were photographed, published as postcards, and issued to German soldiers. The caption read: "This is how trees blossom in Serbia."

P: Sawing alive.

P: Electrocution. Doomed people kept for weeks in dirtiness were promised a shower bath. When they entered the cabin they stepped on a high-tension metal mat.

P: Mass poisoning. Caldrons of hot tea and mercury chloride were served to hundreds of people. (The bell kept ringing, but this report took more than five minutes.)

P: In the death camp of Jasenovac, Professor Premeru said he saw four quisling executioners, Kojic, Matijevic, Pudic and Gasparic, drinking the blood spouting out of their victims' gashes and licking their blood-stained poniards. Another quisling, Majstrorovic-Filipovic, the inventor of the "cup-and-ball game," caught with his poniard live babies which soldiers threw at him.

Declared Dr. D. Julius, director of the Mental Hospital at Zagreb: "The greater part of the war criminals were drawn from among so-called 'normal' people. ... On killed or captured Germans we found touching letters, full of tenderness, love letters--and photographs showing atrocities carried out."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.