A HOLOCAUST.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLV, Issue 57, 8 March 1911, Page 5

A HOLOCAUST.

A FIRE AND A PANIC

HEARTRENDING SCENES

LPKESS ASSOCIAIION.j (Received JMarch 8, 0.5 a.m.) ST. PETERSBURG, March 7. v The'inhabitants of Bologoe, chiefly railwaymen, and many peasants, came to see cinemaiograph slides dealing with the liberation of the serfs, and also the last *day .of the carnival preceding. Lent. The show was given in a wooden building with three doors, of which two were closed and the other barred in order that only one person could be admitted at a time. The windows and shutters were closed. An explosion of benzine occurred, and in a sfew seconds the hall was a mass of flames. Twenty-five of those present, mostly men, retained their presence of mind and escaped by a narrow passage. The rest were burned.

A party of townsmen oluckily dashed into the building and made desperate efforts to save their wives and I children, but nearly all the rescuers perished, the fall of the roof completing i the holocaust. The firemen were not 'long in arriv--1 ing, but their efforts were fruitless. 1 They could only help to remove the charred beams and boards from the corpses, many being tmreeognisable. The fragments, which the peasants lifted into sleighs By candle-light, were taken to the mortuary. Heartrending scenes were witnessed. Parents with bleeding hands were digging among the smouldering ruins. Ninety corpses were extricated and it is believed that 120 have perished.