ARMED FORCES: Barbarity

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<| Just before withdrawal from Suchon on Sept. 23, 1950, North Korean Communists piled wood, packing cases and other combustibles around the outside of the crowded Suchon jail, drenched everything with gasoline and lighted the fire, in a case of wanton savagery reminiscent of the Nazis' rape of Oradour-sur-Glane. Estimated deaths by fire: 280, mostly ROK civilian officials and landowners, if After capturing Taejon in the summer of 1950, the North Korean Home Affairs Department jammed the city prison with suspected anti-Communists—soldiers, officials, business and professional men. Beginning Sept. 23, 1950, several groups, numbering from 100 to 200 each, were taken from the cells each night. The prisoners, hands tied behind their backs, were herded into line beside open trenches and shot. As U.N. forces threatened the city, the Communists resorted to more expedient methods, dumped bodies into makeshift trenches. Others were sealed into caves or jammed down wells (see NEWS IN PICTURES). Estimated casualties: from 5,000 to 7,500, including 42 U.S. soldiers. Said the Army's report: "For murderous barbarism, the Taejon massacre will be recorded in the annals of history along with the rape of Nanking, the Warsaw ghetto and other similar mass exterminations . . . Those responsible . . . must be brought to judgment before the tribunal of civilized peoples."