Newspaper Page Text
Three Year Tunneling lor Freedom Fl#*cii!f # * Discovery and KCsllll* . Thirty Lashes. Being the Tragic Story, of Elie Kogan, Revo!utionisti Who | Survived Prison and Siberia and Is Now a Free Man m New wN the Tear of a small si)op on.East IN Broadway of s naoH City, .bent, Broadway \ew York City, a bent, wrinkled, sad-looking young man Btood squinting at a watch. -J . , ..,. 'That's Kogan," said the proprietor; (Tie visitor nodded. -He was ; looking Cor Kogan— l Elie Kogan, if you iplease, j not the silent, busy -workman," but £-iie j Kogan, the revolutionist,; the refugee, j "Yes," said the "workman, "without removing his watchmaker's • monocle, "I am Elie Kogan." ;. : , . .- He did not look Ilka a revolutionist. . ! He looked very much like any other (young man you ttias"..see—morning, afternoon or , night—on ; the' East Side. •You would; not have suspected him of desperate . twlventure. ' But the visitor, ..Qcnew. > ••• /'' This Elio Korean ,"was standing faere with the monocle in his eye, only by virtue of a country's liberty. You % looked at Elie Kcgan and heard the farmers of Lexington clumping down the road to immortality. Shots were At night, we woul< I / dig at the tunnel rdig at the tunnel using no tools, excep } a table knife and our hands We broke the table knife into four pieces, though, f and in that way every J man had a shovel. i Elie Kogan hred; blood ran, and constitutions were wrULe.:—all that tHla prampture ly-ased man . , : !.a enabled to say: i\ "Yes. I am Kqgan." : . t • - *&:; few months ago that - same re marl; would have sent, the sneaker i to . lifelong t 1 Siberian %xile. He ; *>' a3 j the hunted' prey of a nation. Having I beeti sentenced to prison, at seven i for participating : T in a revolutionary outbreak he ': had served bis term and )egun ; the \ secondary •; penance of Russian "' law —Siberian . exile. After three attempts he ihad finally succeed ed in .escaping, to America?, In the • pens 'of Ellis t Island he had 'been halted again, this time by thei immi gration law which forbids the admis sion .' of I persons who *- have been con- j. vie ted of crimes involving moral tur- | pitude. ' ' ;: ,'->'•'. i^S^re :-'_", ■.'-■' ■ ■ ■ ■ -,-. ••■■' .. ■■-■=:. Iv r fni the I end Jhe > had.; been > admitted .' ifOtherwise, this {; story f ■ might > n£ver have been "written, and Elie Kogan 'would have •'been sent /back- on the steamer .^ which brought £ him here— back to imprisonment, oppression , and Siberia, the land of living r death. Two Ellis Island boards of inquiry even rendered him this verdict.: ,_ Then; the case was carried by Simon O. Pollock, attorney for the Russian Political Refugee*; , League, to the court of final apjKai--in this instance, the United Statas Secretary of Labor. 1 " f The sec ,i ' ■-. i.r? lr ,■■■■ , .■> f,j ■_■■% t'-> .r ~ v,''' ' T <"V.'* ■■/* ' ■ ■:,]* ti ' ,11..." retary—who s is ■ named William * Wil son and -happens-, to have participated in some -more.ors less revolutionary movements hiro*?^— ruled : - that Elie Koga'n .was to be given sanctuary. ; '' The importance of this fact is t not confined ;to the destinies of Elie My Bride Komance or the Famous Artist and the Little Girl Who Was the Original of the Pain tin g Which Was Ex hibited in the Paris Salon. . ago, : when. - JL ■■ Penrya Staiilayvs, , the . artist, •' was in ' I Princeton; 5 ; lie s formed >, ; aa ideal. Later, at a dinner party in Eng land, there appeared A among \- the guests a' - young '■■/■ woman, ';.;'littli more .; than a girl, who v ; was the visualization' of that ideal. The ad miration of - 4 the ■ artist . for the girl -was re ciprocated. The •' two met ; often during the ; season that followed. > Penryn Stanlaws per- ; ' suaded the girl to sit for her picture. He _- had • never \ before at-" tempted ' a painting *in ■?■ oils. , ' The sittings ■ were a , success. . The ••, picture, :>; as it . pro gressed, i received ; fay- ; orable v criticism from stichf great' artists as -> ; ; Corman, Blanche and i~ Raphael Colin. When it was completed "i it 7 was j. accepted by > the ■ National •Committee and hung in the Paris Salon , next to a I masterpiece ! by ) Bou tet ?. de ; ! Monuel. Art loving Paris talked ; . of Stanlaw*s ~L picture. He even became hon ored by,- his own country, \ Penryn Stanlaws was happy. The girl of his boyhood dreams, v now a real- V ity, had become : the inspiration which won for the indolent, care free young artist hi 3 greatest \ success and assured for ' him '" his career. Was it strange that !he should love her. !'->.—-VS...V-*;■*■ ;••*'■.-.. i,;>.- i v:..« J rj.- ■» i ■;: Four weeks . ago they were married Kogan. \ It relates to all • others ■ like him—others who have fled from Si beria, others who ihave rested their hopes upon America. In the future they will find that revolution is not "a crime involving.moral^urpitude. • As for Elie Kogan, his personal suf ferings have been sufficient to expiate a hundred crimes. _-\ , ~ \ c "I was seventeen years old," he said, y carefully removing the monocle and ■* placing it upon his workman's bench. The proprietor of .; the jeweler's shop • had returned to the counters. "The day was Jan. ,21. 1906. I had come from home some fifty miles away to attend a revolutionary meeting at Pskov." ;He Stopped \a ; moment. \ "Per haps I first had better tell you more about myself? Yes? Very well, :.\.". : : "Ours has always been a family of revolutionists. " You .' understand? When I was a small '■ boy, the soldiers killed the youngest of my -. sisters, > just four years old. .- That would alsoi make you a revolutionist, would it not? It is very bad for soldiers to kill little children, very bad. And )it is • not the i worst thing they do." He ran a : hanO j across his I forehead. v' "Well, iit was that - which made us revolutionists. My father, my mother, T . my '- three; brothers, 1 ; myself—we all hated the Government. We hated the land in r j which we lived. <We would have left j it, but when you are poor J. what can j you do?" He waited for an answer. :'i "Well, I became *a> revolutionist.- ilfj I could not leave Russia, I could try; to make it better. ■■:= It was not because j I like to make trouble; ; that is -some- j thing I ; have always hated. , You have i to live in Russia"; to understand, ij was a .member of the Bund, the Social Democratic Party. We did not want! to kill anybody. \Y\Vonly wanted te ! make things so that everybody could i live peacefully and happily. But th a .\ Government did not like that. ; , It did • not > want people (to be happy. It \ wanted them to be afraid. So, in j every" way that it was able it tried toj i ( break up our meetings. Therefore, we I were • compelled ■to hold them -in •=■ se- : j cret. : ' ■ '-•'•-.•.:■: .-• ■ i "It was during one of these meet- i ■i i;"'. ; ■' ' '•'. *■ ' " , ... .' .: •. •'''■' ■ ■ . Penrhyn Stanlaws. —this ',- artist who loved an Ideal and j Miss Jean Pughsley, the girl who en Ings that some ; one ■ committed j the act for which I was sentenced to prison. I was. .at the meeting, so yati see it would have been impossible £dr"nie*,to : have been at the : other place, which was two hours' walk distant The ; member s* of -another revolutionary party broke into a Government pawn-1 \ shop We y,. did " not < believe.in that* because , itr did ■no good; ■} nothing ever] happened as a result of such things. ;. except that :- some M one was 'T , , sent to Siberia. The Government spies knew i this. But since they could not get) ■ hold vof the people who had V actually) broken into : the pawnshop they ar rested all the revolutionists they could j in town, me among them. - - •'" . - "We were not ' tried in an ordinary court by a jury. Instead we ,were ;tried in the court reserved for political offenders. I could , not tell my where abouts at ~ the :, time of ; the breaking! into the pawnshop, because i that would! have involved • others who ; were at the : meeting, and as it is against the law to ; hold J such f meetings, '; they would X have been .' arrested. The keepers of. I the pawnshop testified that I was not! ! ; among the four men who broke into the place, that made no difference. I was a revolutionist, and some one ! had to be punished. So J. was sen-: tenced to eight ; years •in .prison,^ and !:'subsequent*; exile ras ia% political of fender. l «■'- ]' ,; ' '-'■ -■ ''!•!. V' • "As I • was not yet eighteen years old this sentence was - reduced by law to five years * and ' four months. I thought this very funny, for, after all, : a young \ man - has : longer. to live : than, an old one; therefore, why should not his sentence be lengthened and 'the older man's reduced? But it sva"s ex*: plained to me that this ! was • consid ered humane. I thought it foolish. A young !manpst always more dangerous than an old one, anyway. - " "Wei!, as soon as they put me in the governmenta.l prison at Pskov I be gan trying to get out. Some comradee and myself dug a tunnel under the walls. -' It was a loirg tunnel, and it took us three years to dig it. Our cell was only six feet long ] and four feet wide, so :we had : a hard time in hiding tered Into his life like the realization of "a dream in j soft, shimmering satin of palest >y gray, 'with golden wings and the fragrance of lilies ■of [ the val ley • floating round i her." This :■ is "the* way -the :artist;Jdescribed: her.". > ;_; the V dirt. c We would ■: make V. it- into } mud and let it dry on our shoes; ( - then ; when they took us out <to work we would kick it off in 'the} prison yard. At'night we would dig at the tunnel, using no tools except a table knife and ' our hands. *. We broke the table knife I into four ; pieces, though, and >in that . way t every : - one had a shovel. " ',* ; "We 4 did this for three ) years. Then, ] r When the tunnel was within a foot of the outside of the walls, the guards moved us to another cell. This did not discourage us. One of us was a fgoodC mathematician » and he v figured out a way in which , * we could connect .with the work we had already done. So we started at ;it again, and at the •end lof * another year we " managed *to get back, into our old. tunnel. ,>-. • I "But it was all wasted : labor. . The guards had known what we were do ing from , the first, and just ,as we thought we were on/the.verge of free dom they took us up before the gov ernor of J : the prison and charged us with attempting to escape. The pen alty for this was thirty-six lashes with ; the knout. v ; We received , them on the back—here are . the scars. - Yes, they ■were vefy i painful. [> v I became un conscfops "' three times while iit '• was going on, . and they - had to , revive -me before they could continue. : ■-''■. \ ."We made no more attempts to es cape from Pskov. The time of our im prisonment was almost \up and :we would f sqon he sent into ? exile in Si beria. There, while it would still be difficult to escape; there were no walls, and: we would ;be compelled to 4 dig no more useless tunnels..:^' ;. - :: ~J: "I was sent to the colony at Wjerch nedink. ? The """first time, I tried to es cape to Japan, but I get lost in the snow, and, after almost starving to death, was /caught": and £ sent back" to :the fortress. , This time they gave me fifty lashes. , '~%'": ..J,-,. >. , \\ [, ,' - It did not ; bother me much, because I was getting tough. After six months I tried it again. . Some friends helped me, and means of forged passports I succeeded in 1 -' getting" .beyond' the frontier. This time ; I did . not try to -go- by way of Japan,"; hut ••■ trusted to Penrhyn Stanlaws *;".-The • artist^selected ■'the; name. In j an or 1 nis dreams lie Had tnougat oßc his ideal as "Hazel." ; -The first time toy I the hazel hues in the ' coils of hei i luxuriant hair.v ;■-'"...". my v friends to , see me safely through Russia. •We: have way of 1 doing that, you know. v.; My family, which, after my imprisonment, had been persecuted i go : that »it had been compelled to flee Russia and take refuge in the United States* sent me some money. My revolutionary friends . supplied more, besides providing me with hiding places and forged passports. For two months they passed me from hand to ! hand across the country. I was afraid J all the time of being caught and sent I back to Siberia. Sometimes I travelled by railway; sometimes by wagon, and 'sometimes by foot. ■ Even after I ' crossed the German frontier I was not safe. ' For the refugee there is no hiding place except the United States. "About a month ago my.friends put me f aboard »a steamship at Bremen, and, after seven years of difficulty, I found myself at last on the way to America. When I landed in New York and the people at Ellis : Island told me I could : not - stay, I 1 lost heart for the first time. If I went hack to Bremen the , Russian spies would /be waiting on the other* side; v I would be ar rested; I would be knouted; I would be returned to f exile. Here, in New York, V was everything I ' loved—my father, my 'brothers, my sisters, and most of all, liberty. Then the people said for the second time tihat I could not come in, and I was almost ready to despair. ; The vrest, well, it is all settled now. . I am in New York. I am happy. The revolution will go on Without; me. In Russia I > could do no good: in New York, perhaps, I can be of help." V '! . > Elie Kogan picked up the monocle and returned it to his eye. ,~ vf "You see," he said, as the wrinkles ; of his young-old ; : face screwed them selves into ;' : gruesome shape, "every thing turns out all right." ! ;r Somewhere toward the front of the shop the proprietor made certain audi ble displays of salesmanship. •'• The visitor nodded in < his direction. ;. " "He knows nothing about it?" ;*.'. "He?" Elie Kogan laughed ? quietly. .''Hei;'was' at Wenciinedink for eighteen years." •"* ► •_* '* .