The Manitowoc tribune. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1866-1878, 1876-11-16
RUSSIAN CIVILIZATION.
How the Polish Exiles are Punished in
Siberia.

| Telegraph writes: At time when so
many well-meaning people are anxious
that the benefits of Russian rule should
be conferred on Turkey, I think they
would do well to read quotations from
Ruffin Piotrowski's work on Siberia,
which was published in 1868 by an En-
glish firm:
81 now approach dark episode in
Polish suffering. The civilized world
will doubt its truth and declare it exag-
gerated, as it once doubted the horrors
commitedt at Kreezetniky and Leknly
in the days of the bar confederation; as
it doubted the barbarities of Cherchyn,
and listened with incredulity when the
story was first told how Catherine IL in
cited the peasants of Podolia and the
Ukraine to massacre and despoil their
lords; and how Suwarrow, after the
storming of Prague, left no living crea-
ture within its walls. The world did
not, and still does not, believe that this
system was then commenced which drives
us away in thousands into the heart of
Russian Siberia to fill prisons and case
mates; that in Warsaw in the days of
Constantine, brother of Nicholas, no Po-
ish family could lie down at night with
out the fear that perhaps ere morning
one of its members might be torn away,
consigned to dungeon, soourged and
tortured with hunger and thirst, so that
the confession needed might be wrung
from his agony. Sierocinski and four
others who had been drafted into the
ranks of the Siberian army were con-
demned eac h to 1000 blows witha stick,
without mercy If any one of the
members outlived the sentence he was
to be sent to Nerchinsk mines for the
rest of his life. The great mass ofpersons
implicated we're variously condemned to
1900 1000 or 500 blows with the stick,
and those who survived in some cases to
hard labor for life, in others for num-
Der of years to penal colonization, and
others again for military service. x
At day break two battilions of ], ZOO men
marched out of Omsk, one charged with
the execution of those condemned to T.
| 900 blows, the other with the execution
of the lesser sentences. The hattalions
halted, each formed in double lre face
to face, leaving passage through long
drawn ranks. The executioner, Galafie-
yer superintendent the arrangements,
and remained with the men who had to
give the 1000 strokes. According to
general usage the soldiers charged with
such duties are placed closely shoulder
to shoulder in dealing the blows, but
slightly raise the arm from the elbow
and keep feet together as when on pa
rade. The sticks should only be SO
thick that three can be dropped in q
carbine- barrel, on this occasion all this
was reversed. Galaheyer placed the
soldiers at arms length from each 9th
er, made them raise their arms high in
carryin out the sentence, and the sticks
were twice the usual weight and size.
The victims were brought from their
prisons to the place of the executions.
The bloody work was begun simultane-
ously by both the battalions. From
both came the came the sarleqshrieks of
agony. Sterocinski is left to the last
and compelled to witness the fate of his
friends ere his own turn came, and he
had long to wait for that deadly walk
Then his shirt was stripped from his
shoulders, and his hands, according to
the regulation in such cases, fastened to
a carbine, held by two soldiers, who
thus compelled him to keep regular step
The order TO march was given. The
priest entered the street of death, reci-
ting in low voice, 'Miserere mel Deus
l'secunduo magnam misericordiam tuam.
Gelafeyer shouted frantically, Harder,
harder strike harder, and the submis-
sive tools of despostism obeyed so well
that Sierocinski, after walking down
the line and receiving 1000 blows
fell insensible, weltering in his blood.
He was lifted to his feet to fall again i'm
mediately, and then hurdle, prepared
for his occasion, was brought. He was
bound on it kneeling, and so dragged
up and down until his sentence was full
filed. He had given at first a few
shrieks of agony, and still was breath.
ing until the 1000 blows, the remaining
800 were struck on his corpse, or rather
his now Aeshless bones. Eyewitnesses
assure me that the flesh was cut in strips
by the rods, the very bones were crushed
and splintered, and the entrails expos
ed"
A SLIGHT MISTAKE-There' q good