The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1922-04-11
UNBURIED DEAD
LEFT in ODESSA
TRENCH YET TO BE DUG IN
SOME CASES
Correspondent Gets Best Idea of
Terrible Conditions by Visit
of Inspection

ed Press) Five hundred to 1000
bodies are each week buried in Odes-
sa's newest GENTRY. They are car
ried out in pushcarts by friends or on
their shoulders in coffins if the dead
relatives still have money and affec-
tion enough or are transported in mo-
ter trucks. If carried in trucks, the
bodies are piled high like so many
broken packages, men, women and
children all together and all uncover
ed, barring a few rags.
At the cemetery the bodies are
dumped near trench and cast there
in. Sometimes there is no trench. 1t
is yet to be dug. This statement of
fact is not given in criticism. The
wonder is that the bodies are buried
at all and many would not be but for
the free Sunday labor of the Com
munists, donated as party discipline.
To say that the last phrase of the
bitter story of famine Russia is told
in this cemetery would be common
place. Nobody can tell the story of
Russia. Perhaps neither Tolstoi nor
Hugo could have done. Those liv-
ing or visiting here only now and
then at odd moments realize what is
happening.
To say that the population of Odes-
so, though constantly renewed by
Jews fearing pogroms in the country,
is about one-half it's pre-war popula-
ton of 100000 to 10000; that con-
ditions are as bad as on the Volga,
worse than in Constantinople, or
worse than Vienna at it's worst; to
say that the life of the people is daily
sapped by fear, famine, nervousness,
madness, hopelessness, doesn't mean
much. Probably one would have to
see this cemetery to understand.
"Why not 60 out to our cemetery
and look at the mountain of un1urled
dead, if you wish to know what is
happening to u.s. said woman to
the correspondent.
Buildings Knocked Down
The way ran some miles to the
northeast of the city's center, through
the Moldavanka suburb, shattered by
the explosion of 1918 in the military
warehouses. All along the streets and
the road were block after block of
stone buildings knocked down. Be-
yond the wrecked and unused ware
house and factory district lay the
burial place on the edge of the steppe.
''This is our third and newest cem-
etery," said the guide. 'The others
were filled long ago."
There were no bodies above ground.
At the extremity of the graveyard
peasant bent over. a shovel alongside
a muddy trench. Called to-, he came,
wading through mud and snow.
eighty bodies have been cast here
and 1 am covering them," he said.
Then: 81 am hungry. have not been
paid for long time. There are five
of US. None of US have paid.
This seemed to be the end of the
story. Going back, a Russian priest
stood at the gate, gowned in faded
black velvet. "Let me show you some
thing" he said, getting into the auto
mobile. He directed the machine
down macadam road, leading past
the cemetery to the open country. He
brought the machine within a few
minutes to big motor truck, backed
across the road. 1t carried some ST
bodies, limp and naked, arms and
hands and heads rising here and there
massed like sardines in can.
Only Part Buried
The driver explained that he had
Just come from the railroad station
where the bodies had been assembled
for him. He pointed to others lying
in the mud across the ditch that
drained the road. "These l brought
yesterday. Only a part have been
buried" he said.
The priest took the cart little
further down the road. Here was an
other truck, unloading. Il got the
bodies at the typhus hospital and the
madhouse," said one man. Some
times he got his loads from the street
at house doorways; often babies put
there by parents too poor to bury
them. ~s; I'D
How many people were being bur-
led? No one could say exactly. A
count had once been kept Of those