OGPU PRISON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 85, 11 April 1938, Page 5

OGPU PRISON.

, I ACTRESS' EXPERIENCE ASKED FOR A CARPET. free after ten months. Eva Lowenburg, dark-haired, vivacious, London-born variety actress, told the story of lier ten months' imprisotiliient in Leningrad's huge Ogpu gaol— : a story "so crazy,"' she -a'ul, "it might' be something out of 'Alice in Wonder-' , land.' " j "I*ll tell you all about it," Eva said, i "right from the night last April that I i was hauled out of bed. | "1 was allowed to dress properly, and; it hey took me in a line, big limousine to I the Leningrad prison. "Yes, I'll say it was a mighty commonable ear, and 1 would have liked I riding in it if we hadn't been going to i prison. ' "Anyhow, they stuck me in a cell, and it was several days before they jgave me an idea of what it was all about. It seems that it was because ■ my husband (a young Russian to whom j she was married two days before her : arrest) was a 'counter-revolutionary.' "I answered them pretty sharply, and let them know that 1 was born in Great Britain. I tried to find out where my husband was, but 1 failed. 1 still do not [know where lie is. j "My cell wasn't too bad at all—about 118 ft by 9ft, witli a barred window, pla.ii: I bed, a chest of drawers, and a chair. "I found the mattress a bit too bumpj for my liking, so I asked the to give me another. Then I asked for carpet to cover the floor. But that ' too much. "I don't remember how many cross- ■ examinations 1 had. but it must have i been about twenty, lasting three to five i hours each. "They told me I could go home the * minute I had confessed everythingI 'You know your husband is a iijist,' tliev told me. 'What exactly a il'rotskyUtl asked them.

" 'You know he has been conspiring against the .State,' they'd reply. ""How has he been doing tliati' I would ask. •'"Now. admit he's an enemy- of thft Soviet Union,' they'd plead. And so it would go on i'or hours. They never got any further. "I was cross-examined, sometimes by one. at other times bv two or three young officials, all looking very smart in elegantly cut Miits. -The youug fellows were very sweet and polite about trying to get me into signing a "mad" confession of things I'd never done. I refused to sign; I knew that would have b;en my own death warrant. "The fox trot and tangoes I composed puzzled the Ogpu boys. They thought it was some kind of cypher, and that I must be a 'master spv.' "1 m feeling fine now, thank heaven. It all doesn't seem too bad —now." 1 Eva. in March, 1937 —while touring Soviet theatres with her sister—divorced , her first husband. Heinhard Lowenburg. a (•ei man living in Leningrad. She married a Russian named Sabarov-ki on \iuil 1114, 1937. >1 —