Page:The Shield (Knopf, 1917).djvu/208

182 The first party, three thousand strong, stayed a while at Melitopol, then they were transported to Simferopol where they remained five days, and were finally distributed over the towns and townlets of northern Crimea.

It is told that one of the parties was assigned to Yekaterinoslav, but the authorities refused to accept the people and ordered them to proceed further. The local papers report that a group of deported Jews was transported from Pavlograd to Jankoy, then, according to an instruction from the Ministry of the Interior they were shipped to Voronezh. . ..

There are many old men and women, many girls and mothers, and a large number of children in the party which has been brought here. All of them are miserable and exhausted, a number are ill, either because they had been sick when the catastrophe overtook them or because they fell ill on the way, and there are many pregnant women among them. As a result of their long wanderings, wives have lost their husbands and mothers their children and they eagerly question everybody about those dear to them.