Page:Lars Henning Söderhjelm - The Red Insurrection in Finland in 1918 - tr. Annie Ingebord Fausbøll (1920).djvu/167

 to be distributed among their men. After three more murders on peasants the neighbouring village was set fire to, and its twenty-two farms soon formed one sheet of fire. Now the enemy might come if he liked!

At Viborg prison a tragedy similar to that at Riihimäki was enacted, only with the difference that here the Red did not fire among the prisoners, but threw hand-grenades among them. The effect was terrible, a number of killed and wounded, and an unspeakable terror among the survivors.

Finally, only a few words about the great execution ground the Red established at the station of Kouvola, near Kymmene river. To this place prisoners were conducted from the whole river valley, from the cities of Frederikshamn and Kotka, from the big factories by the river, Karhula, Kymmene, Voikka. and Kuusankoski. The Red themselves thought they had executed about 400 persons here. More than 200 dead bodies have been found either buried in a swamp or thrown in the river. But many have been carried away by the current, and will perhaps never be found.

Among those murdered in this place was also the director of Finland's largest industrial plant, Kymmene Works, Gösta Björkenheim. He had not only been an able manufacturer, but he was also a humane man and a benefactor to his workmen. He had tried to make Kymmene factory town into a model place according to the most advanced social principles. Though his own workmen took his life, he was not the victim of personal hatred or private vindictiveness, but of the system. He was a capitalist, therefore he had to go.

During the whole of the insurrection Björkenheim had been kept confined in his villa. A representative of the Swedish Red Cross lived with him to protect his life. But one day he was taken by the Red, and he