EXILED FROM RUSSIA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21102, 12 August 1930, Page 7

EXILED FROM RUSSIA.

HARROWING HORRORS. TERRIBLE DEATH ROLL. CHILDREN FROZEN TO DEATH! Harrowing letters from tlie Russian peasants exiled—presumably as Kouluks — by the Bolshevists, were recently circulated by the news agency of the German Democratic Party as coming from “an absolutely trustworthy source.” For 'obvious reasons, says the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, the names of persons and places are suppressed, but apparently the writers are Russian subjects of German race.

“In the confinement'of our place of exile," writes one peasant, “ there are altogether 2000 of us. The misery is indescribable—hunger, filth, lice and disease; and the daily death roll is sometimes 20. There are 97 in our room. We have no windows here, and you can imagine what the air is like. Hundreds run away and are arrested. Women and children are not allowed out, but sit in the darkness and beg for a morsel of bread.” \ Another letter, which is undated, says Where we now are there are only skv and forest. There are no villages and np water. We must melt snow in order to drink and to cook. For a week our men folk have been busy building us huts. When the snow melts there will be nothing but morass. It will then be impossible to. get things either in or out. and wo shall bo buried alive.”

On May 18 one of the correspondents wrote: “Children die daily of undernourishment, measles and scarlet fever. When a child dies it , is carted to the town without a cotlin. As many as 10 children were put into a_ single grave without the presence of their relatives who wrote about it but were ignored.” Another letter mentions that on a journey of 20 days “ into the unknown—the Far North,” in a temperature of 30dcg below zero Fahrenheit, several ‘ children were frozen to death.

“ Railway transport passed us,” continued the writer. “ th° doors were closed, but lamentations and groans could be heard from the cars. Through the opening in the roof a man’s wailing voice begged for water and for the removal of the dead. To this an official replied, with derision, that he might as well keep quiet, .as they were all to perish in that way.