The assistant commandant of the Kholmogory camp, a Pole named Kvitsinsky, was particularly ferocious. This sadist-executioner has on his conscience the horrors of the so-called "White House," in the neighbourhood of Kholmogory. The "White House" was an estate abandoned by its owners, containing a white-painted building. Here for two years (1920-22) shootings took place daily at the direction of Kvitsinsky. The terrible reputation of the "White House" was doubled by the fact that the bodies of those executed were not taken away. At the end of 1922 all the rooms of the "White House" were filled with corpses right up to the ceiling. Two thousand sailors from Kronstadt were shot there in three days. The smell of the decomposed bodies poisoned the air for miles round. The stench, which never abated by night or day, stifled the prisoners in the camps and even made them faint. Three-quarters of the inhabitants of the town of Kholmogory were finally unable to endure it any longer and abandoned their homes.
Without the slightest doubt the Soviet Government knew of the horrors perpetrated at Kholmogory and Portaminsk; it could not help knowing. But, having an interest in the pitiless extermination of their opponents, real and supposed, the leaders of the Communist Party confined themselves to washing their hands of the whole business.
Executions were carried out at other places besides the "White House." The Tchekists used to come into the prisoners' enclosure and, having marked down the destined victims, point to one or another of the prisoners with the words: "One — two — three. . . . One — two — three. . . . "One" meant that the prisoner was to be shot the same day, "two" that he was to be shot to-morrow, and "three" the day after to-morrow. This was usually done when a fresh large party had arrived, and room had to be made in the camp for the newcomers.
According to the evidence of eye-witnesses, about 100,000 persons in all were shot at Kholmogory and Portaminsk. There is nothing astonishing in this figure, terrible as it is. For three years on end these camps constituted the chief prison of all Soviet Russia. To them, in addition to the large convoys, were sent, from every place in European and Asiatic Russia, all those whom it was for any reason undesirable or inconvenient to kill on the spot — for example, all those who had been "amnestied" by local Soviet authorities.
The executioners of Kholmogory and Portaminsk used another method of destroying their prisoners: they drowned them. Of a whole series of cases known to me I will mention only those which follow.
In 1921 four thousand former officers and soldiers of Wrangel's army were ordered to embark on board a barge, and the vessel was sunk at the mouth of the Dvina. The men who were able to keep themselves on the surface by swimming were shot.
In 1922 several barges were loaded with prisoners. The Tchekists sank some of them in the Dvina in sight of everyone. The unfortunate passengers on board the other barges, among whom were many women, were landed on one of the small islands near Kholmogory and shot down with machine-guns from the barges. Mass murders were carried out on this island very frequently. Like the "White House," it was heaped with bodies.
Those who escaped being shot the Tchekists hounded to death by compelling them to do work beyond their strength. The prisoners in receipt of the above-mentioned ration, among them old men and women, worked all round the clock. It was counted a piece of luck to find a rotten potato in the fields; it was greedily eaten on the spot, raw.
When the Tchekists noticed that the inhabitants of the region — Lapps, Zyrians and Samoyedes — were throwing bread to the crowd of prisoners as they passed their huts, they began to take them to their work by another route, through thick forest and marshes.
If a newly arrived prisoner was decently dressed, they shot him at once, in order to get his clothes sooner.