GERMANY AND RUSSIAN POLES

Temuka Leader, Issue 1350, 2 July 1885, Page 3

GERMANY AND RUSSIAN POLES

Private letters received in London on May 23rd describe the present expulsion by Germany of Russian Poles from their province as being attended by the most cruel and heartrending incidents. Many of the Poles who are now driren out were settlers on German territory for mßnj years, and haye thoroughly

identified themselves with local interests. Most of tbem went to Posen and Silesia to escape frutn the intolerable despotism at home. The decrees of expulsion have been issued by Von Pattkamer, German Minister of the Interior, and they affact 80,000 Poles resident in Germany. Eight thousand of these have already been jrrested without warning, and conducted to the German frontier by Prussian troops. The remainder of the 30,000 ordered out of the empire consist of those who had obtained permits of the settlement.

The decree of expulsion gives those a short reßpite, in order to allow them time to settle up their affairs, and dispose of their propprty and otherwise pieparp for extradition. Whole villages ate already depopulated, and their refugee inhabitants turned over to the Russian authorities at the German frontier. Numbers of the poor people are fleeing into Austria to escape the enforced return to the land of their birth. News of all this barbarity has cast a chill throughout Russian-Poland. Kussia, according to later alviees, is engaged in the execution of retaliatory measures. Many Germans residing in Russia are forced to return to their native country. Hardly any notice had been given them that they were required to return, and much suffering and hardships attended expulsion. In many instances these refugees reach the German frontier in a destitute condition.