Page:John Feoktist Dudikoff - Beasts in Cassocks (1924).djvu/89

 to 76 marked on the wall in chalk, dropped to the ground. I was taken back to prison. At the inquest I was accused of belonging to the Opposition, and the false witnesses, Lubansky and others, were again referred to. I was accused because it was alleged that I was serving both Skoropadsky and Petlura simultaneously. Once more the verdict was "to be put to death."

Early one morning, they took me, under strong convoy, to No. 8 Elizabethinskyah Street where a great crowd of people were assembled in the court-yard. In the center of the yard there was a large caldron full of water which was steaming-ho. Near the kettle there were a few steps on which one ascended, and on top a gang-plank along which the poor sufferers walked until they were rapidly dropped into the boiling water. A short distance from the caldron stood two hangmen with huge forks, with which they pierced the bodies of the victims and dragged them out of the water to the ground. They then poured benzine over them and set fire to them. Under the shed they were "attending" to the women and young girls, whom they violated, and upon whom they inflicted incredibly beastly tortures, such as driving stakes into their bellies, throwing out the intestines and then hanging them on the barn wall, or nailing their hands and feet to a tree. As I was standing there, a Commissar came over to me. He was Comrade Bezsmertny whom I had known from childhood. He told me to plead guilty although I was innocent, because this was absolutely necessary in order to get out of the "Che-Ka," to be transferred to No. 16 Yekaterininskayah Street. Here they also subjcted [sic] those arrested to the tortures of the Inquisition, but of a milder nature. Had the Chinaman who struck me with the butt of his gun killed me, I would have gotten off easily in comparison to what I was yet to experience.

I was taken to the guillotine. In a suburban park, where the trees had been cut down, boards were nailed to both sides of a stump and between them a large blade was moving up and down. To make the impact heavier, a few stones were fastened to the blade. The executioner stood near the guillotine, and in front of it, between an inclosure made by two ropes, stood those sentenced to death. Their eyes shut or cast-down, they moved forward mechanically. … True, there wer [sic] also a few who turned their eyes heavenward, where the sun was just about to rise. … It was early in the morning. … A few of the victims, mostly women, crossed their arms on their breasts and whispered prayers. In dead silence, broken only by the dull thud of