New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 480 pages of information about New York Times Current History.

New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 480 pages of information about New York Times Current History.

Among them are: 

The wife of Francois Luyck, 45 years old, and her 12-year-old daughter, who were discovered in a sewer and shot.

The daughter of Jean Ouyen, 9 years old, who was shot.

Andre Willem, 23 years old, sexton, who was tied to a tree and burned alive.

Joseph Reynders, forty years old, who was killed together with his nephew, a lad of ten years.

Gustave Lodt, forty years old, and Jean Marken, also aged forty, probably buried alive.

The witness testifies that he personally proceeded to exhume these two bodies, and that he afterward buried them in the town cemetery.

The village of Rethy, near Turnhout, was the object of devastation and shooting during the day of Aug. 22 by seventeen cavalrymen who had penetrated into the village.  A young woman of fifteen years was killed by a bullet.

Still more horrible crimes, if that were possible, have been committed by the German troops on account of their defeat at the hands of the Belgian Army before Malines.  The City of Louvain, with its artistic and scientific riches, has not been spared.

New reports will be submitted very shortly.

GOOREMAN, President,
ERNST DE BUNSWYCK,
Secretary of the Commission.

* * * * *

III.

Destruction of Louvain.

Antwerp, Aug. 31, 1914

To the Minister of Justice: 

Sir:  The Commission of Inquiry begs to make the following report on the deeds of which the City of Louvain and the surrounding localities and the vicinity of Malines have been the theatre.

The German Army penetrated into Louvain on Wednesday, Aug. 19, after having set fire to the towns through which it had passed.

From the moment of their entrance into the City of Louvain the Germans requisitioned lodgings and victuals for their troops.  They entered every private bank of the city and took over the bank balances.  German soldiers broke the doors of houses abandoned by their inhabitants, pillaged them and indulged in orgies.

The German authorities took hostages—­the Mayor of the city, Senator Vander Kelm, the Vice Rector of the Catholic University, the Dean of the city; magistrates and Aldermen were also detained.  All arms, down to fencing foils, had been handed over to the town administration and deposited by the said authorities in the Church of St. Peter.

In a neighboring village, Corbeek-Loo, a young matron, 22 years old, whose husband was in the army, was surprised on Wednesday, Aug. 19, with several of her relatives, by a band of German soldiers.  The persons who accompanied her were locked in an abandoned house, while she was taken into another house, where she was successively attacked by five soldiers.

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New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.