EXILE HORRORS

Taranaki Daily News, 1 August 1930, Page 14

EXILE HORRORS

■ ■ TALES FROM RUSSIA. - CHILDREN FROZEN. • Harrowing letters from the Russian I peasants exiled (presumably as Ko.ulaks) by the Bolsheviks are circulated by the news agency of the- German Democratic Party as coming from “an absolutely trustworthy source,” says the Berlin correspondent of the . Daily ''elegraph. For obvious reasons, 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 2090 of us. The. misery is indescribable —hunger, filth, lice, and disease and the daily death-roll is sometimes twenty. The stench in the yard is terrible. There were 97 in our room. We have no windows here, and you can imagine what the air is like. Hundreds run a wav and are arrested. Women and children are not. allowed out, but sit In the darkness ami beg for a morsel of bread.” . Another, letter, which is undated, says: “Where we now are there are only sky -and forest. There are no villages and no water. We must melt snow in order to drink ’ and to cook. For a Week our men folk have been busy building us huts. •Wlic-n the snow melts there will be nothing but’ morass. It will then be impossible to get things cither in. or out, and. we’shell be buried alive.” . CHILDREN’S DEATH-ROLL. On May 18 one of tho correspondents wrote: “Children die daily of un-der-nourishment, measles, • and scarlet fever. 'When a . child dies it is carted to the town without a coffin- As many as ten 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 twenty days '“into the unknown —the Far North,” in a temperature of 30 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, several ' children wore frozen to death. “Railway transport passed vs,” continued the writer, “the doors were closed, but lamentations and groans could be heard from the cars. Through the opening in the root a mans wailing voice begged for water and for the removal of the dead. To this an offi-1 cial replied, with derision, that he might as well keep quiet, as they were all to perish in that way. ■ Even women with child were sent, f ■ > me of them brought children into the world en route. The babies were taken away, and the mothers sent on. In despair the mothers have even thrown their infants into a house On passing, with the words: “You must perish in any case- —this’ wav or that does, not matter. ’’