The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-11-24
BRITISH NEWSPAPER
 MAN TELLS HORRORS. OF RUSSIAN PRISONS.
Tells How British Are Taken Out and Exc cuted by the
 BOlsheviki

London, October s0.-Sufferings of
 the British residents of Moscow in the
 bolshevik prisons in that city, where
 they were kept for six weeks after hav-
 ing been arrested by the Red Guards upon flimsy pretexts are vividly DOT irayed by Guy Beriiiger, a Rsuter cor
 respondent at Moscow, who was set
 free early this month and has reached
 Haparanda
 Beringer In his report wired from
 l5aparanda, says he was arrested while
 in the home of the British chaplain
 adjoining the British consulate in Mos
 COW, and together with the chaplain
 and several other E.nglishmen and
 women, was marched on foot two miles
 through the streets to the I.ubyanka
 house of detention.
 T was separated from my cempan-
 ions and was led to a room in which
 were some 80 prisoners, mostly civil- ians, including a few women," writes Mir. Beringer. T spent five days and nights in this room in which there was just sufficient space for the inmat tes to sleep on the floor. There was no bed
 of any kind, for food we had a piece
 of black bread and few dips with a
 wooden spoon into a bowl of the thn-
 nest possible cabbage soup containing
 some herring heads. Eight of us had
 to share the contents of this one bowl.
 Many people who were without pro-
 visions from outside were literally in state of starvation.
 Like the Russian prisoners, we were
 treated as helots and were addressed
 insultingly in the second person sim
 gular by low brutes among the Red
 Guards
 Late one night when some of the other prisoners were singing suddenly there was deathlike hush I looked up and saw a Red Guard officer and soldiers standing at the opening to the anteroom in which the prison guards were stationed. A list of 12 names Of civilians and soldiers was read out. No one doubted what this meant. It was the list of those set down for imme- diate execution. It included two pairs of brothers. All the condemned men | rose without delay and shook hands with their neighbors. Not one showed | the slightest fear.
 "The iron folding doors between the l big room and the anteroom were then closed. This was done only when pris- oners were taken away for execution. The doors remained closed for few | minutes and were then reopened and l the names of two other soldiers who | had previously been overlooked were called out. These also rose without a tremor and the folding doors were shut l a second and last time. The con- demned prisoners were either shot In the basement of the prison with their backs to the firing party or they were | taken out to the suburbs in motor lor- | ries and there told to get out and get away. Then volleys were poured into them while they were walking or run l ming away. The bodies are sometimes recoverable by relatives on payment of I heavy bribes."
 1 Later Beringer was transferred to ! Butyrky jail at the other end of the city, which contained some 5000 pris- | oners. In the cell he occupied there was Russian ex-judge, few soldiers and some members of the middle and working classes. The vermin was as i bad as at Lubyanka and sanitary con- | ditions worse. There was no possibH- I itv of taking bath, but Beringer was allowed half hours exercise daily in the yard.
 There he and some of the others re- ceived assistance from Maj. Allen Wardwell of the American Red Cross, who, he writes, Literally slaved Oh behalf of the prisoners"
 "The conditions of our internment were so vilely sordid that 1t is no won der that the minds of some of the more refined prisoners became unhinged." Beringer wires.
 'The bolshevik leaders show no | mercy. In their newspapers they hold up Marat as the ideal friend of the people. They urge that his example should be followed and preach the ex- l termination of the entire middle class"