KORNILOFF’S DEATH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12757, 29 September 1919, Page 5

KORNILOFF’S DEATH.

BOLSHEVIKS INSULT HIS CORPSE. General Korniloff, the popular Russian boro. ie.-trier of the South-East-ern volunteers, v. as killed by a shell at u;e siege of Ekaterinodar, the capital of the Kuban. Cossacks, which was in the hands of the Bolshevik lied Army Korniloff died on March 21, 1918, havJ _ng passed the command to General Kaledin, -who some time after committed suicide, when the command passed to General Beniken, the actual leader of the South-Eastern Volunteer Forces in Russia. The body of General Korhiloff was buried by his retreating troops in Handau, a settlement of German colonists, about 27 miles from Ekaterinodar. After the funeral great care was taken by Korniloff’s followers to level the ground, so that no mark should be left, and that the Bolsheviks might not find the place and desecrale the grave. Unfortunately the measures taken proved ineffective, writes a Russian correspondent of the London “ Morning Post.” An ofacial document which I have in my possession, a of the report of the Commission of inquiry into the Bolshevik atrocities, instituted by .Denikin's Government, under the chairmanship of General Meinhardt, proves that the grave was found by the Bolsheviks, On April 2, after the funeral, the Volunteer Army evacuated Handau, and the next day the Bolsheviks occupied the place. The first, thing they did was to search for arms and treasure left by the Volunteers. They found neither, hut in digging up the newly-turuea soil in places considered by tnem as suspicious, they found a coffin, which on being brought to the surface and opened was found to contain a bony clad in the uniform of a full General. The Bolsheviks recognised Korniloff. The clothes were torn off a shirt only was left on the body, and it was brought on a cart to Ekaterinodar, where in the courtyard of one of the mns a sort of court-martial was held over the corpse. The leaders of the Bolsheviks, Sorokin, Zolotareff, Chistoff, Chuprin, and others, identified the corpse as the body of Korniloff and ordered it to" be burnt, after haying been ex-posed pubkcly. lor this object the cart was pulled out of the courtyard into the street, and the body was thrown down on the pavementA crowd of Red soldiers and hooligans surrounded the body trampled it und-r loot, stnking-ifc with swords and sticking bayonets through it. The shire was torn to pieces and the naked body was hung up by a rope on a tree, the crowd meanwhile jeering, hooting and neither the body with stones. * J At last the rope broke, the mutilated remnants were carted awav to the slaughter-house, where the ‘body was mmt on a heap of straw. This savage cremation was continued next dav. when it was found that some parts of the body remrdued unburnt. The ashes and half-burnt bones were trampled into the ground.