St. Landry clarion. (Opelousas, La.) 1890-1921, 1892-03-26
RUSSIAN ATROCITIES.
How the Jews Were Cleared Out
Of a Muscovite Town.
Driven from Their Beds In the Dead ef
Night the Half-Naked Ouecasts
Take Refuge In the
Cemeteries

The story of the clearing of Marina
Rostscha is perhaps the most cruel and
repellant episode in the whole record of
last springs barbarities, says a London
correspondent of the New York Times.
The Jews were of the lowest class
artisans, petty traders and street hawk
ers, porters and day laborers. They
had congregated here, it is true, to
avoid the police, but this involves no
suggestion of wrong doing on their
part. Their object in getting as far
away as possible from the police was
not that they were criminals, but that
they could not raise the money to pay
them for permission to live unmolested
in the town. There is no record OF an
arrest ever having been made among
the Jews of Marina Rostcha for Grim
inal offense The heads of families
all the men, in fact-went daily to Mos
cow to work, returning in the evening
to their homes. Some of their children
came into the technical or handicraft
school maintained by the Jewish COM
munity of Moscow. Most of them,
however, studied their primers and
elementary books at home.
OF sudden, without warning, on an
inclement wintry night, troop of po-
lice and Cossacks surrounded this OUT
of-the-way country suburb, and, form
ing an engirding Gordon, proceeded to
carry out Prince Golitzyn's written or
der to expel the entire community.
This order was executed with what
Russians regarded as incredible brutal
ity. The lights had been extinguished
in almost every house, and the unsus-
pecting people were asleep. They
were awakened by the crash of
their doors being broken open, and
the boisterous entrance of Cossacks
with torches and drawn swords. The
terrified inmates were routed out, and
driven with curses and blows into
the night, without being given time
even to dress. They snatched such gar
ments as they could and ran. The
tales that are told are too narrowing to
dwell upon. At least three hundred
families were thus dragged from their
beds and chased out into the wintry
darkness on this first nights raid. Bare
footed. half-n-ked, frightened out of
their senses, these outcasts wandered
helplessly through the black woods,
moaning in their misery or raising
shouts in the effort to keep together.
Some of them, at least, were able to
build fires in the forest, and gather
around these the old and inf1m, and the
women with nursing babies at their
breasts, or little children, who lad
made their way thus far with bare feet
over the snow and frozen ground. The
soldiers pursued them hither and
stamped out these fires. Others did not
stop in their flight until they reached
the cemeteries, lying just outside the
town. Here they fonnd refuge, and,
crouching for shelter among the tomb
stones, siited for morning.
No allusion to this amazing event has
ever appeared in any Russian paper.
There was no editor who dared so much
as to mention it. Although many
deaths resulted, directly and indirectly,
from the terrible shock and exposure of
that night, there were no inquests, no
Investigations, no official reports.