HORRORS OF BOLSHEVISM

Otago Witness, Issue 3443, 9 March 1920, Page 25

HORRORS OF BOLSHEVISM

BRITISH CHAPLAIN'S TORTURE AT ODESSA. The Rev. R. Courtier-Forster, late British Chaplain .at Odessa and cue .rtussiau ports of tue .liiaek fiea, eomriDutes to the ximes a moving account of ins experiences during neany a year spent in soviet Russia. J±o has read all the published acepunts ol the app&Limg atrocities and brutal tyranny ot the Boisiievist rule in Russia, ..and ; finds that far from being an exaggeration, they coincide with his own experience and ouservation. He writes: ■•-;..•

While 1 was stiii British -chaplain of Odessa the city was deluged wu.ii; blood. When the Bolshevist elements, graiting .on to their main support the 4'OGO criminals released from the city gaols, attempted to seize the town, people of education, regardless of social position, ottered what armed resistance was in their power,-, YVorKmen, shop assistants, soldiers, professional men, and" a handful of officers, fought for ireedom and liberty througn tiie..,streets o. the great port for three days and against the bloody despotism of the Bolshevists. Tramears were overturned to make barricades, trenches dug. in the streets, machine guns placed in the upper windows of houses to mow" the thoroughfares witn fire. The place became an inferno. The Bolshevists were victorious. On capturing Odessa railway station, which, had been defended by a few officers and a number of anti-Bolshevist soldiers, the .Bolshevists bayoneted to death the 19 wounded and helpless men laid on the waiting room floor to await Red Cross suocour. -.; Scopes of other men who fell wounded in the street.-, also became victims-to : tne triumphant- Bolshevist criminals. ,-; The majority" ot these wretched and unhappy sufferers completely disappeared. Inquiries at tha. ; hospitals and prisons revealed the fact they*-wei© not there, and no-trace of them was. to be found. A fortnight later there -*as a terrible storm on the Black Sea, and the bodies of the missing men ware washed /up on the rock 3 of Odessa breakwater and along the shore; they had been token out to .sea in small boats,' stones tied to, their feet, and then - been dropped over aiive into deep, water. Hundreds of others were captured and taken on board the Almaz and the Sinope, the largest 'cruiser of the Black Sea Fleet. Here they became victims of unthinkable tortures. Victims roasted alive.

On tr.-: ciucpe . (jcuerat (Jhorruichan' and somo other; pi; friends oi my own wkvo iastL-aea' one by one with' iron chains to planks oi wood and pushed slowly, inch by inch, into, the slup's furnaces and roasted iuhe. Others were tied to winches, the wir-ciies turned until the men were, torn ■r. two 'alive.-.* Others were taken to the h':-*v:xs and:'.'.scalded with boiling ;steam; Vi~.<=,y Wcr-i . then"."moved to another, part of tiiiv Kiip and.'..ventilating faii3 set revolving that currents'.'..oi'. cold air might blow on the scald* mid'., increase the agony-of the torture. Tftp full " names of .17- of the Sinope victims wfcio given me in writing by members of their families or their personal friends. Thc-so wero lost- later when my rooms were raided, my papers seized, and I myself arrested and thrown into prison. . . The house in Catherine square in which 1 was first in captivity afterwards became the Bolshevists' house of torture, in which hundreds of victims were done to death. The shrieks of the- people being tortured to death or having splinters of wood driven under the quick of their nails were so agonising and appalling that personal friends of my own, living more than 100 yards away in the Voroutsohsky Pereoluk, were obliged to fasten their double windows to prevent the cries of anguish penetrating into the house.... The horror and fear of the surviving citizens were so jireat that the Bolshevists kept motor lorries thundering up and down, the street to drown .the awful screams of agony wrung from : their dying victims. '. This house of torture remains as much as possible in the condition in which the .Bolshevists left it, and is now shown to those who care to inspect its gruesome and blood-bespattered rooms. There are people who maintain that, -with theatres open and electric trams running, anarchy does not exist, and that life in Soviet Russia is both secure and pleasant. I did not find it so. There is a haltingplace for tho electric oars at the corner of Kanatnaya and Greeheskaya. Returning from the" town at 11.30 one morning, I encountered a scared and frightened group at this point. Inquiry revealed the fact that the Bolshevists had just successfully murdered two unprotected and defenceless women waiting for the tram to go into the city shopping. Their crime was that both clothes and manners showed them to be "Bourjouie." Also, in the Kanatnaya one morning a working woman was shot for the sport of the thing while running across the road to purchase a bottle of milk for her children. Her body was lying by the kerb as I came by, the bottle smashed, and milk and, blood streaming down the gutter. The houso door stood open, her two little children crying with grief and terror at the entrance.

TREATMENT OF WOMEN

Weeii by week tne newspapers puolished articles tor and aganist tne nationalisation 01 women. In South Russia the proposal did not become a legal measure, but in Odessa bands of Bolshevists seized' women and girls and carried them off to the Port, the timber yards, and the Alexandrovsky Park for their own purposes. Women used in this way were tound in the mornings either dead or mad or in a dying condition, 'lhose found still alive were shot. One of the most awful of my own personal experiences of the new civilisation was hearing at night from by bedroom windows the frantic shriaks o£ women in the park opposite. Screams of shrill terror and despair, repeated at intervals until they became nothing but hoarse cries of agony, like the death-calls of a dying animal. This happened not once or twice, but many times. Never to the day of my death shall I forget the horror of those dreadful shrieks of tortured women, and one's own utter powerlessness to aid the victims or punish the Bolshevist devils in their bestial orgies. To be decently clothed and washed was a crime in the eyea of the Bolshevist proletariat. Both women and men were stopped in the streets of Odes3a, robbed of their boots, stripped of their clothes, and sent home naked through the frost audi snow. So many hundreds of people were treated in this manner under the Soviet rule, that the satirical paper of South Russia, the Scourge, brought out a full-pago cartoon representing one of the chief streets of the city, with a naked man and woman departing band in hand up the road, while a group of unkempt Bolshevists with men's trousers and women's underclothes fluttering on their arm s wore seen running in the opposite direction. Beneath was the satirical observation: "In Odessa the World finds Paradise anew." For this reflection on the . glorious new civilisation of the Soviets the windows of the Scourge offices were "smashed and the paper fined. MARTYRDOM OF CHRISTIANS. It was the martyrdom of the two metropolitans, and the assassination of so many bishops, and the killing of hundreds of various Christian ministers of religion, regardless of denomination or school of thought, that -proved the undoing" of the scourge. Russian Orthodox clergy, Protestant Lutheran pastors, Rohaan Catholic priests, were tortured and done to death ■with the samelighthearted indiscrimination in the name of Toleration and Freedom. Then it was that the Scourge, seeing the last remnants of liberty ground _ under the heel of a tyranny more brutal in its methods than a 'mediaeval torture chamber, published another- full-page cartoon representing Moses descending from the burning mount, bririghig in his arms the tables of the Ten Commandments to humanity, arid being stoned to death by a mob of workmen's and soldiers' delegates. The following Sunday afternoon I was passing through' the Town Gardens, when I saw a group' of Bolshevist soldiers insulting an ikon of. the thorn-crowned face of Christ. The owner of the ikon was spit l ting at the pictured face, while the others were standing round watching with loud guffaws of laughter. Presently they tore the sacred picture into fragments danced on it, and trampled and stamped the pieces into the mud. By this time the .devastat-' ing corruptiori~of the holy revolution had so spread that I saw open acts of.indecency being committed in broad daylight in the parks and public gardens. These are but a few experiences from the mass of events crowded into my. life in Soviet Russia. In England numbers of people are incapable of believing the ghastly conditions to which. Bolshevism has reduced _ Russia, but those of us.who ;haye.. lived in the country for; many years arid seen the abominable Bolshevist system bearing fruit, know the absolute truth of these things. The men at home who are deliberately duping and deceiving our trade unions and manual workers as to" the true conditions of practical Bolshevism. are not only committing a crime against democracy, but an outrage on humanity. W,.,