GERMAN CRUELTY TO CAPTIVES.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 273, 3 November 1916, Page 2

GERMAN CRUELTY TO CAPTIVES.

TREATMENT OF RUSSIAN PRISONERS. HARROWING DETAILS. There recently left London for their native country’ two young Russian students, v ho, taken prisoners in Belgium in the first days of the war, escaped from Germany after nearly two years of hardship and confinement. Their names are Leon Moisseeft and Sergif’Shohn. ami both when the war broke out were students at the Univcreity of Liege. It was the .younger of the two friend'. Leon Moisseeif. who told their story, speaking the French tongue in a low voice, hoarse from long hardship. “Ou August 26th, 1911.” said Leoti Moisseeff, “ourselves and about jortyfiv» other Russian students in Liege, •some of them with their wives and families, wore seized by the Germans, crowded into very filthy goods trucks, and sent on a seven hours’ journey to Aix-ia-Chapellc. From Aix wo travelled all night and all day, and at midnight reached the camp at Munster--Munsterlagcr, as we afterwards knew ll ’ SLEPT IN STABLES. “It had been a great cavalry eampand there were a number of stables into which r.'e were packed. The stables were built of wood with roofs of corrugated iron, which were old and full of holes, so that the rain poured in on us. We slept on the bare ground, littered with dung as the. horses left it, lying close together, shoulder to shoulder. “In Alunsterlarger we were to remain until December 14t:h, 19] J. There were French and Belgian prisoners there besides ourselves, and afterwards some English. Our meals consisted mainly of soup, in wooden bowls, and, scanty as each man’s supply was and poor as was its character, we were rarely allowed to have it all. For there were not enough bowls to go round, and the German sentinels being impatient to serve each man they often snatched the bowls from us before we had finished eating their contents.

“All the food was very bad. The ‘coffee’ we had for breakfast was made of ground acorns, and served without milk or sugar. Our nights, too, were a great hardship. At. first we had only seven blankets to thirteen prisoners, and this under a leaking roof in an unwarmed building. Often in the mornings I woke up with my hands swol.en and blue with the cold and wet. The straw we were given to lie on was filthy, and as we had no change of linen our shirts were soon in rags. There was only one tap in the yard, and washing among so great a number of prisoners was a long and tedious and difficult task.

“The discipline at Munster was harsh and unreasonable. Thrusts from a bayonet, and often shots from a rifle, served our sentries as words of command. On November 15th we exchanged our wooden stables for a new building made of brick, and here, with the slight improvement that now the rain no longer poured in on us, we stayed ti.l the midnight of December 13th, 1914. Then we were transferred to the great camp of Cellelager, in Hanover. ATE FOUL GARBAGE.

“The plight of the Russian soldiers was terrible. They received no parcels from home —the route is too long and indirect to make that possible—their rations were wretchedly insufficient, and most of them bad no money to buy food. So horrible did their hunger become at times that in spite of the food we tried to spare them they would search ravenously among the foulest garbage of the camp refuse bins for such scrape of food as the heads and bones of herrings. “As Cede we were set to work on draining marshes. At first the undertaking was in the hands of contractors, who hired us from the eamp authorities. While these contractors had charge of the work we were scandalously treated. There was no officer in command, only a young under-officer, acting on his own authority, lie forced us to work on the marshes from 4 a.ra. to 7 p.m.—ls hours a day. We were soon completely broken down with hunger and fatigue. Several men who refused to work were driven like cattle to the marshes. This contract undertaking soon became so notorious a scandal that the Government itself took over the work and afterwards we were somewhat bettor treated. as it was the labour was bad enough. Most of the time we were working up to our knees in water, and naturally many of us soon fell ill. Consumption attacked a large number. Out of three buildings in the camp there were used as hospitals, two were and are still full of consumptives. None of them are likely to recover, since they have no medicine and no hospital supplies at all. The mortality was very great. Every day three or four soldiers died in ea.mp from hunger or hardship or disease. The soldier prisoners were forced tp work. A number of Russian soldiers who refused to make munitions of war were driven in turn between a long double row of armed sentries, who beat them savagely with the butts of their rifles, and wounded them with the points of their bayonets. The men who were so flogged and wounded were afterwards refused medical assistance.”