Primary tabs
Transcription
[Letter 1]
[Bolchevik message thrown over the fence from the Internees Camp at Holdsworthy during the time of the prisoner's strike there (March 1919).
It was wet weather at the time and the message was wrapped up in this way in order to keep it dry. There were a number of other similar messages thrown over but they were destroyed. The instigator of the strike was an internee named Heyne.
(To be kept wrapped as found)]
Fellowslave
Do you know the facts in connection with the existing trouble [?side] of the fence? Here they are:
Two internees tried to escape but were stopped by the guard As a consequence the recreation grounds for the use of the internees were closed, and it was also prohibited to work the vegetable gardens of the prisoners which where cultivated with much labor and now decreed by that terrible tyrann Halman to rot. Think of it, 4500 persons made responsible for the doings of 2 fellow internees! Is this not an act of a madman?
Beware soldiers! this tyrann, which is starving us to-day, may decree the same fact to you to-morrow. Soldiers wake up! Do not let yourself be made tools to cruelly oppress those, who perhaps to-morrow will atand side by side with you to fight an common enemy "Tyranny". Hear the watchword of Europe awaking:
Long live Liberty Fraternety Equality and down with those who force us to slaves.
Think of it soldiers! nearly 5 years behind the barbe-wire cut off from all intercourse with the outside world, the satisfaction of man's natural needs impossible and yet there comes a madman, who wants to starve us into submission, merely because we dared to stand up fo our rights not to be made responsible for the doings of others
Be men! Go and have the facts about what is happening