SOVIET PRISON HORRORS

Hawera Star, Volume L, 6 March 1931, Page 9

SOVIET PRISON HORRORS

RULE OF SECRET POLICE CRUELTY TO CAPTIVES ESCAPEE’S GRIM STORY. UDlt®l PrsßH Association —By Electric Telegrapb Copyright.) Received 1.30 p.m. to-day. HELSINGFORS, March 5. A startling personal narrative of escape from the O.G.P.U. prisons at Inorian is made by a peasant named Juvo Markoff. He was arrested by the O.G.P.U. in 1927 and escaped last January. He describes in detad the unbelievable conditions existing in the prisons where he was variously conffned at Leningrad, Popoff Island, Saloxiety Island and the Kerml Monastery. Prisoners were packed like herrings They were ordered to lie on the right side and were unable to turn to undress. The barracks were swarming with vermin. , . Prisoners rose at three m the momj n tr. They were chained in pairs and were set to drag heavy logs through snow for upward of two miles. Scores who sank to the ground were kicked by guards. . , ... , ' Bread issued for nine days did not last for four. Typhoid fever spread wholesale and every morning many were found dead. In the height of winter there were 60 to 100 deaths daily. The bodies were dragged by the hair across the floor and piled into a coffin holding five. They were thus carried to the cemetery and dumped into an open "•rave and covered with snow. Iho coffin was then returned for more bodies. When the snow melted the bodies rose on the surface of the water and stones were thrown on them to force, them to _ the bottom. When a grave was full it was covered with thin layers of earth. He fin all v describes tortures a t Anser Island, where practically naked prisoners were forced to work in snow and 20 degrees of frost. Forty-two White officers were shot in a heap. Prisoners were forced to -sit tor hours in their underclothes on high benches. silent and. motionless. Those disobeying were placed in straightjackets and thrown into a cold, moist cell, from which none emerged alive.