DEATH SENTENCE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19340, 2 June 1937, Page 9

DEATH SENTENCE

AFTER FIRE IN SCHOOL

SIBERIAN TRAGEDY

MOSCOW, March 25.

Three men have been sentenced to be shot by a special tribunal at Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, following a disastrous night lire fit n local State infants’ boarding school which caused heavy loss of life. They are Khornchik, ox-President of the Insurance Department; Kuramgin, president of the local co-operatives; and KharitdiiolT, an ai'chiteet.

Tho indictment described thorn as leaders of “Trotsky’s West Siberian reserve centre.” it accused them of deliberately planning tho school building "in a wrecking manner” so as to he a death-trap for tho children in case ol' fire with intent to "weaken the confidence of the working masses in the measures taken by the Soviet for educating their children.”

Their alleged accomplices, a. night nurse, Yegorova, and a night-watch-man, Potapoff, both of whom ran away, leaving the babies to die, were sentenced to eight years in a. detention camp. Yegorova was also indicted for managing as her second profession a local house of ill-fame. Nurse Yanko, headmistress of the boarding-school, and Backoff, chief of tho Novosibirsk. Fire Brigade, were sentenced to three years in camp for respectively agreeing to manage a school “designed in a wrecking manner" and passing the wreckingplans for tite construction.