Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1919 — DROWN 50 SERBS IN CHURCH WELL [ARTICLE]

DROWN 50 SERBS IN CHURCH WELL

Frightful Tale of Bulgarian Ferocity Comes to Light From Serbia. MANY TORTURED AND KILLED Citizens of Leskwatz Are Bound Hand and Foot and Cast to Their Death —Valuable Machinery is Damaged. Leskovati, Serbia. -In Leskovatz there is a church. Under the church a well. Tn the well the bodies of fifty citizens of Leskovs tz were found — drowned. Their arms and Legs had been tied and they had been thrown into the water by the Bulgarians when they swept over Serbia, a citizen of the town of Leskovatz told me. He also said that a good many of the leading citizens of Leskovatz, priests, school teachers and such, had been deported —as those left behind understood —into Bulgaria. But that

just lately they had been finding in the foothills of the mountains over which the road went, graves in which thirty, forty and fifty of these citizens had been buried, after having been tortured and killed. Large Factory There. In Leskovatz before the war stood one of the few large factories in Serbia. * 4 It had been making woolen cloth for army uniforms and also linen cloth. The buildings had been filled with expensive machinery imported from Austria and Germany. When the Bulgarians came they put up the machinery at auction to enterprising citizens of Bulgaria, and many of the machines carry tags or are chalk-marked with the names of the successful bidders. They had not been able to transport all the machines before the Serbians came back, though a great many had been moved, but all those which could not be removed had been cleverly damaged, almost beyond possibility of repair. All the engines, all the various machines for the manifold operations required in the manufacture of cloths had been damaged at some vital spot All the leather belts and even the leather attached to rollers had been cut away. The boilers had been made useless.

It is an open question whether the machines can be repaired, and if repair were possiblei as to whether it would not cost more than to take a fresh start. The owner, on§ of the few capitalists of Serbia, seemed to take’an almost melancholy satisfaction in having us see how his life work had been destroyed. He seemed too old, too broken and too discouraged to take a fresh start.