OCR Text |
Show THOUSANDS TELL OF TERRORISM Refugees From All Parts of Russia Flee From Savage Bolshevik Bandits. OMSK, Siberia. April 3. (Correspondence (Corres-pondence of the Associated Press) A thread, of sufertng runs through 'he stories told by refugees from all parts of European Russia, hundreds of thousands thou-sands of whom have found asylum here. Almost all of them fled from Bolshevik terrorism. They tell of murder of the members of their fam ilies. deprivation of property, savage treatment, hunger and terrible hardship hard-ship of their flight from Bolshevik bandits. The correspondent of The Associat-d Associat-d Tress talked with a number of these refugees in order to learn their adventures, Several cases came to llpht in which clrls unable to escape before the approaching Bolsheviki shot themselves rather than fall into the hands of the terrorists. The wife of a Russian colonel now at Omsk said to the correspondent. "We lived a life of comfort and con-(ntmeni con-(ntmeni on our land not far from Samara Warned by our peasants we fled across the hills hidden in a farm cart My cousin, a girl of 18. who thought she could not escape, took a revolver from the desk In her drawing room and shot herself through the head because she knew what her fate j would be. You can understand why It is difficult for us to believe in Bol-I Bol-I shevl.sm." I This preference for death rather than capture hy Bolsheviki seems to be prevalent among the young women and girls of former well-to-do families Of European Russia who are now in Omsk The wife of an assistant minister min-ister of state and her sister, a girl of 25. fled from Bessarabia. The girl said with quiet Russian fatalism "If the Bolshejki succeed in getting to Omsk 1 shall shoot myself " Some stories tell of the famine, which existed in the district, of the Ural mountains. When a relief train arrived at Kalma not far from Perm it was surrounded by children begging beg-ging for bread A man of 72 years was i so overcome when he received a loaf Of bread that he fainted and two little children, when given bread, became insane from sudden joy. I i refugees tell of several cases in whirl peasants murdered the proprietors proprie-tors of the land upon which they lived in order to obtain possession of the farms. On the other hand some of thi peasants imperilled their own lives to help the land owners to escape from the Bolsheviki. |