THE SOVIET WAY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19769, 17 February 1927, Page 2

THE SOVIET WAY

10,000,000 PRISONERS TREATED LIKE BEASTS ' LONDON, Feb. 14. The "Times’’ correspondent at Riga relating terrible experiences at the Soviet prisons, states that tan American, Aaron Copman, aged 48, arrived destitute on the Latvian frontier. He declares that he travelled to Moscow in 1924 on behalf of Americtein firms. Th© Soviet delayed completing his business until the autumn, of 1925, when he was arrested. He was condemned to three years in concentration camps without trial for a "breach” of the monopoly regulations. ” He was herded with 137 others, mostly criminals, into a cage with wheels like those used for beasts in a menagerie. The cage was coupled to a train and sent to Siberila. Then the prisoners were marched 100miles knee-deej) in snow. Many collapsed. Devoured by Wolves Many prisoners attempted to escap but wer c recaptured in the surrounding forests or devoured by wolves. Copman’s prison friend attempted to escape, but the guard shtittered his knee with an explosive bullet. He was dragged back to camp and left to bleed to death. His companions were forbidden to render him assistance. The gutards, owing to the shortage of clothing, stripped his living body, and in tearing off his boots they literally tore off Ilchenko’s wounded leg. A woman who had stolen an insignificant sum, and who was serving a sentence, escaped. Shece returned and the commander shot her with a revolver in sight of the other prisoners. Many others were wantonly shot on the smallest'provocation. Copman estimates that there are 10,000,000 prisoners in Russia and 150,000 in Moscow alone.