RUSSIAN ESCAPEES

Hokitika Guardian, 4 November 1929, Page 5

RUSSIAN ESCAPEES

STORY OF MISERY.

(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.)

(Received this day at 1.5 p.m.) HELSINGFORS, Nov. 3

Finnish guards discovered thirteen Russian refugees, including a woman, pitiably exhausted, on Lapland frontier. They declare they escaped from a dreadful Bolshevik prison on Solovyetsk Island, in the White Sea, after knocking down a guard and warders, while they were at work in forest. The party suffered great hardships throughout their march to the frontier. They assert that a reign of teih’or prevails at Solovyetsk, which is aggravated by shocicing sanitary conditions, and that prisoners are dying every day.

FURTHER DETAILS

HELSINGFORS, Nov. 4

The refugees are all young, lmt look aged and emaciated. They were recently sent to the mainland to build block-houses. When they heard the Finnish frontier was near, they decided to escape and attacked their gaolers with axes, secured food and a rifle and wandered for a fortnight in deep forests, finally eating berries and moss. The refugees describe the conditions at Solovyetsk as appalling. The prisoners are housed in ice-cold barracks, food is very scarce and medical attention lacking. The filth is indescribable and torture is inflicted daily for the smallest offences. The gaolers’ brutality, especially to women, is unspeakable. A hundred religious prisoners to February displeased the gaolers who sentenced them to death. Their hands and feet were cut off, after which they were thrown, into graves which they had previously been forced to dig, and were left to slowly perish.