Page:John Feoktist Dudikoff - Beasts in Cassocks (1924).djvu/56

 arrival they were put to death or sent to the Peter Paul Fortress and subjected to most inhuman tortures.

I have in my possession a list of these "agents" and assistants of Platon, as well as the names of a considerable number of victims of this Church "Okhranka." These I will reveal, in due time, only to the United States Attorney General in Washington.

Besides all these crimes I can prove still another very important brutal and savage crime committed by Archbishop Platon Rozhdestvensky, leader of the Greek-Orthodox Mission in America, and his assistant, Bishop Alexander Nemolovsky, togeher with many other minions of theirs. This crime was the murder of a woman and took place at Canaan, Pa., at the Swiato-Tikhonovsk Monastery in August, 1913. The woman, whose name I will reveal to the United States Attorney General, was first violated, then killed; her heart was cut out and burned to ashes, which were then pounded into powder and taken with wine. After this atrocity wild orgies followed.

To proceed with the story, a few months after I deposited my money at the Mission Bank, i. e., in the Spring of 1914, and after the dinner to which Platon's preists "treated me," the following took place. One of Platon's gents, disguised as a sheriff, came to see me, and to my question as to the object of his visit, said that he was ordered to deport a batch of political offenders to Russia. This interested me, and I went with him to a pier in Brooklyn from which the steamers for Libau sailed. Having arrived there, I actually saw fifteen political prisoners handcuffed in pairs and kept in the hold behind iron bars. After the steamer sailed, the agent took his leave and disappeared. I met a comrade of mine, a former Russian Army officer. We went home together. On the way we stepped into a saloon for a soda. We stayed and talked a while. After leaving the saloon we had walked by a few steps, when I was suddenly dealt from behind a heavy blow on the head. Bleeding profusely, I fell down and lost consciousness. The officer had disappeared.