EUROPEAN STUDENT RELIEF

Otago Witness, Issue 3556, 9 May 1922, Page 57

EUROPEAN STUDENT RELIEF

The local movement for European Student Relief is being energetically inaugurated. Papers just received by Miss Constance Grant include the following: A Samara paper, the Komune, describes the life of the starving village as follows: — “All the dogs and cats are devoured by the people -not eaten, but devoured animalhke, because from the unbearable sufferings ?f starvation people have lost their humanity and become like beasts, having all the beasts’ ways. Like beasts, they hide in their holes (houses, hovels), not trusting each other, and having suspicion (grudge), like animals ■ without food have towards one another. They come out of their houses furtively (cowardly), looking round to see if they eau get food. Corpses and bones from dead animals, and all sorts of dead stuff, all go into their stomachs. Many have gone mad. There was one case when the inhabitants of a village were awakened in the night by the sound of the church bells being rung. It appeared that a dishevelled, hatless villager in an ecstasy was ringing the Dells loudly and dancing. He thought if he would ring as loudly as h e could he would be saved, because the people hearing the noise would bring him food. Another man was caught cn a dark night with burning firewood near the house of his neighbour, trying to set it alight with the intention of frying Ae inhabitants of the house and eating them up. There exist whole villages where there is not one normal man. 1 hey are all mad about food.” Extract from Saratoff paper of February 9, 1922: —“In the German community (formerly. about the wealthiest villages of Russia) they are killing the remainder Of their, cattle. Instead of horses thjey drive cows. There are still more cases of Sliic-ide on account of hunger, especially in the Steppe villages. The last piece of bread is grix-u to those who arc ill with an infectious disease, for the permission of . lying down beside them in order to get the” infectious disease rather to die of it than to endure the sufferings of hunger. V hole families are eliding up by shuttings themselves up in their houses and shutting up their stoves, thus dying by the .gas fumes.” [The peat and wood fires the peasants have give off poisonous fumes if the stove is shut up so that no air can get to it.]