Sometimes prisoners shaking with frost would sneak out at night to find a
little wood. Some Westphalians who had tried this were beaten to death.
Some of the prisoners were literally eaten up by lice.
Those who did not die of their wounds, of filth, and of misery, were
carried away by petechial typhus which had developed into a violent
epidemic in Wilna, and several thousand of the citizens, among them many
Jews, succumbed to the ravages of this disease.
One witness writes: "Little ceremony was observed in disposing of the dead;
every morning I heard how those who had died during the night were thrown
down the stairs or over the balcony into the yard, and by counting these
sinister sounds of falling bodies we knew how many had died during the
night."
The brutality of the guards was beyond description. First Lieutenant von
Grolman, one of the most highly educated officers of the Badensian
contingent, was thrown down the stairway because this (seriously wounded)
officer had disturbed the inspector during the latter's leisure hour.
Beating with the kantchou was nothing unusual.
A Weimaranian musician, Theuss, has described some guileful tortures
practiced on the prisoners, which are so revolting that I dare not write
them. They are given in Holzhausen's book.
In their despair the prisoners, especially the officers among them, sent
petitions to Duke Alexander of Wuerttemberg, to the Tzar, to the Grand Duke
Constantine, and to the Ladies of the Russian Court.
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