WAITED FOR DEATH

Hokitika Guardian, 2 November 1929, Page 7

WAITED FOR DEATH

RUSSIAN LADY’S EXPERIENCE. ‘".One would like to forgot the experience, but they were too awful. It lis woli-nigli Impossible to do so. Tilings aio so indelibly imprinted 01: the mind tiiat even wikm thoughts arc furl best away they come up st- rtingly s..ddeit. Oil, those -u.eaul'ui mind-pictures.” I lie speaker was Miss Selma Yon Iveskule, a Russian refugee, who arrived in Auckland by the Moeraki from Sydney and the islands. A! is.s Keskule is the daughter of one who was an admiral in the Russian Fleet, and her home was in !•>:- tlionia. At the time of the revolution ft!iss Keskule was travelling with her governess in Ekaterinburg, and vas airested. The manner of her release reads like fiction—she escaped from her trying ordeal by posing as the daughter of her governess. WATTING TO BE SHOT. One of the most awful of her experiences was when she was lined up ng’inst- a wall, with several dozen others waiting to be shot. “I was compelled to dig my own grave, and each of us was stood in front of what wo thought would tc our last resting place,” she said. “The firing squad was all ready, when suddenly an order wag given chat some of us would be spared. That number Was picked out hero and there at random, and I was amongst them—men, women and children. We made a rush for a bridge separating the, execution ground from the other side of a river. Pell-mell we rushed it, and when wo were all huddled on that awful bridge, they fired on us with machine-guns. A man behind mo fell—shot dead. In falling, he knocked me down, and when I came to his dead body was covering me. i have no clear recollection of what happened after that.” SIX MONTHS ON JOURNEY. Miss Keskule said that it took her governess and herself six months to get from Southern Russia to Es the ilia, a journey which, under ordinary conditions, would have taken four weeks. For weeks they were herded in starvation camps, and conditions were appalling. Men, women and children were huddled in compounds and buildings together. Those able to stand would sit on the shoulders of those lying on the floor. The filth and stench were terrible. Oil one occasion Mliss Keskule was thrown into a room containing, amongst others, a mother and four little children. The children were tied up in each of the four corners of the room, and the mother was chained to the centre. When food was brought in the half-demented woman would not allow her children to touch it, her reason being That to do so would only prolong then* agony. Death was preferred to life. Miss Keskule is now resident in Sydney, where she has relatives. She accompanied them on the round trip of the Islands for the benefit of her health, and returned to Sydney by the Marama,