The Advertiser continued to publish the unpalatable truths of events in Eastern Europe and in the lead story, Thursday February 8 exposed wartime atrocities taking place in German occupied Poland.

In an act of reprisal 138 people, including 17 women, a boy of 14 and two doctors were shot by Nazi troops at Wawer, near Warsaw, and neighbouring Anin.

Orders were issued that one inhabitant in ten in Wawer and Anin should be executed following an incident in a restaurant where two men shot at German soldiers who were about to arrest them.

“Whole families were dragged out of their houses, stood up against a wall in groups of ten and shot by a platoon of soldiers armed with machine guns,” the report said.

“In addition the Germans stopped a train which was travelling from Wawer to Otwock and shot one person in five.”

It was stated that 72 Poles met their death in a similar mass murder at Bochnia, near Cracow And an estimated 40,000 Jews deported to Poland from Moravia, Katowice in German annexed Silesia and from the Austrian capital of Vienna had died from hunger, cold and the hardships caused by their expulsion.