TRIAL OF “DICTATOR” OPENS AT MOSCOW

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 198, 19 May 1936, Page 9

TRIAL OF “DICTATOR” OPENS AT MOSCOW

Wrangel Island Official ISOLATED COLONISTS’ SUFFERINGS By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. (Received May 18. 7.45 p.m.) Moscow, May 17. M. Vyshinski, who conducted the Metropolitan Vickers investigation, presided at the Supreme Court trial of I. D. Simenchuk. director of the Polar station at Wrangel Island, in Siberia, who Is alleged to have created a dictatorship. ill-treating the scientific staff and the local population. When a medical officer, Dr. Wulfson, protested, it is alleged that he received a fictitious emergency call and was murdered on route by Simenchuk’s assistant. Simenchuk attempted to starve Mrs. Wulfson and denied the Eskimos the right to hunt or to lie fed from the station’s warehouse, and several died. Otto Schmidt, chief of the North Sea route administration, learning of tile situation, dispatched an investigator, who ended the abuses. The Soviet Press emphasises the deplorable conditions on Wrangel Island, where the colony consisted of 14 Russians and 70 Eskimos. The ice-breaker Krassin. which repatriated certain inhabitants suffering from illness, took Simenchuk to the island in 1934, being the first ship to arrive for five years. Those dispatched each summer were never aide to reach the island, greatly to the disheartenment of the colonists, who saw them in the offing. A cook named Petrik went mad with fire mania during the terrible five years, and menaced the entire colony, trying to ignite everything.