ALLEGED DICTATOR.

Wairarapa Age, 19 May 1936, Page 5

ALLEGED DICTATOR.

STANDING TRIAL IN MOSCOW.

STORY OF MURDER & OTHER CRIMES.

AT WRANGEL ISLAND POLAR STATION. MOSCOW, May 17. M. Vyshinski, who conducted the Metropolitan Vickers investigation, presided at the Supreme Court trial of I. D. Simenchuk, director of the Polar station at Wrangel Island, in Siberia, who is alleged to have created a dictatorship, ill-treating the scientific staff and the local population. When a medical officer, Dr. Wulfson, protested, it is alleged that he received a fictitious emergency call and was murdered en route by Simenchuk’s assistant. Simenchuk attempted to starve Mrs Wulfson and denied the Eskimos the right to hunt or to be fed from the station’s warehouse, and several died. Otto Schmidt, chief of the North Sea route administration, learning of the situation, dispatched an investigator, who ended the abuses. TERRIBLE CONDITIONS. SHIPS UNABLE TO REACH ISLAND. (Received Monday, 7.45 p.m.) MOSCOW, May 17. The Soviet Press emphasises the deplorable conditions on Wrangel Island, where the colony consisted of fourteen Russians and seventy Eskimos. The icebreaker Krassin, which repatriated certain of the inhabitants suffering from illness, brought Simenchuk to the island in 1934, being the first ship to arrive in five years. Those despatched each summer never were able to reich the island, greatly to t’he disheartenrnent of the colonists, who saw them in the offing. A cook named Petrik went mad with fire mania and during the terrible five years menaced the entire colony, trying to ignite everything.