Predictions of
a Massacre Justified.
St. Petersburg,
September 10--The predictions made in these dispatches on
August 23 of a Jewish massacre at Siedlce, Russia Poland,
unhappily have been justified by the fighting which broke out
Saturday night, and developed yesterday into a carnival of
indiscriminate slaughter and pillage in which the soldiery and
the mob took part. Unfortunate Jews were shot and bayoneted in
the streets of the town.
Houses and shops were broken into and sacked. Valuables
were carried off and offered for sale by soldiers to
passengers on passing trains.
In addition to the
Jews a number of Christians and even some officers met their
death in the fighting. The number of victims has not yet been
established, but a conservative estimate places it at 140. The
Jewish fugitives who thronged the railroad stations at Siedlce
are in a state of panic.
Several Hundred
Reported Killed.
Reports received
here from Warsaw and other towns in the vicinity of Siedlce
place the number of victims at several hundred.
The early reports
of the Siedlce massacres put the responsibility at the door of
the Terrorists, but fugitives declare that the soldiers never
would have been allowed to get so completely out of hand
without the connivance, if not the actual direction of their
officers. The first reports received of the Bialystok massacre
last June said the Terrorists were to blame there also.
It is difficult to
obtain details of the trouble at Siedlce, as the town was
surrounded yesterday by soldiers and nobody allowed to enter.
Passengers, however, who arrived at Warsaw during the night
gave the following account of the slaughter:
After the murder
of a policeman by Terrorists on Saturday night and the firing
of a volley by troops into the assembled crowd, which resulted
in the killing of two citizens and the wounding of many more,
the Terrorists hold a meeting and decided to exact vengeance
by inaugurating a general campaign against the police and the
troops, similar is the recent activity along the same lines in
Warsaw.
Regiment Shot
Right and Left.
In the course of
Sunday morning, twelve patrolmen and soldiers were killed. As
a result of this, the Libau Regiment, in a state of infuriated
anger, left is barracks in the afternoon and marched into the
Jewish quarter, shooting right and left as it went. The troops
were joined by crowds of Hooligans, who co-operated in the
plundering and wantonly destroyed everything they were unable
or undesirous to carry away. The sale of booty by the soldiers
went on under the very eyes of their officers.
At a late hour in
the afternoon, the Kaluge Regiment arrived on a special train
from Biala, and measures were instituted to put a stop to the
pogrom. In spite of this, however, the shooting continued up
to a late hour that night.
A correspondent of
the Associated Press who was not able to get into Siedlce
yesterday, started for there a second time this morning.
Siedlce is a town
of 39,600 people, half of whom are Jews.
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