Word: belgians
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...heart of Father Pire -"the heart open on the world." In 1938 he set up a nationwide organization to help the poor, during the war ran holiday camps for children who had been evacuated from the cities, and at night served in stealth as a chaplain with the Belgian resistance. Then, one day in 1949. he heard a lecture by a U.S. UNRRA official describing the plight of Europe's D.P.s. "It was such heartbreak," recalls Georges Pire, "such despair that it suddenly seemed to me that there was nothing I could do-except do everything I could...
...displaced persons ("Our century has probably created no image more terrible than the one evoked by that expression"), he set up a network of godparents who "adopted" D.P. families. Relying solely on gifts, he opened a home for aged refugees in Huy. later opened three more in other Belgian towns. But he soon came to realize that providing food and money was doing next to nothing to cure "the malady...
Missing Parts. To plumb this jungle mystery, the Belgian district officer at Ponthierville assigned a native policeman named Bumba, who journeyed among the native tribes-the dominant Panamoli and their rivals, the Basua-and the scattered river fishermen who are born, live and die in their pirogues, made from tree trunks scooped out with fire. There had been a number of unexplained disappearances along the river, many more than could be accounted for by accidental drownings or by voluntary departures to go to the city, or farther into the jungle, or to escape a nagging wife. The crocodiles...
...rounded up and they readily admitted murdering 34 victims, explained that they ate the hand muscles of their victims to gain the skillfulness of the murdered one, the heart and liver to acquire his courage, the sexual organs to gain his power. Like the famed Aniotas or leopard men, Belgian officials say, the murderers often wore hooded, waist-long cloaks of crocodile skin that left their arms free to seize and strike. The attacks mostly took place at dawn or twilight in foggy or hazy weather, and the victims were often paralyzed by fright by the supernatural appearance...
What's Wrong? The confessed criminals were members of the Panamoli tribe, most of the victims were Basua. The Belgian authorities feel certain that the society of crocodile men was founded as an outgrowth of tribal rivalry. But though the crocodile men admitted their murders and the ritual cannibalism, they still refused last week to give any reason for the crimes...