Re: VMs: Tenth Pavilion

[mesinik@xxxxxx]

Not long time ago, we heard how well some languages make the difference between
what "is" ("I saw it") and "somebody told" ("he is saying, he saw it") ... Here
we see, this difference is important ... I do not believe very much, this could
be the true story about what happened there ...


Quoting Dana Scott <dscott520@xxxxxxx>:

> Hello All,
> 
> The following is an account of the escapades of Michal Woynicz at the Tenth
> Pavilion prison in the Warsaw Citadel which led to his subsequent arrest. 
> There is an accompanying letter by Ethel Voynich which I will submit to the
> list in a separate e-Mail.
>     
>     "It soon became clear to everyone, to the arrested, and to those outside
> the prison walls, that the threat of execution was now a real possibility,
> first for those who took a direct part in the three assassinations, and
> second for every leader of 'Proletariat' against whom it could be proved that
> he had taken the fatal decisions, helped to organise the assaults or had
> provided the assassins with their weapons.  All the facts were in the files
> of the gendarmes and the state prosecutor.
>     The Bohuszewicz leadership of the party made plans to engineer the escape
> of the most endangered prisoners from the Citadel.
>     In July and August 1885 the organisation smuggled a few small files into
> the prison to cut the iron bars of the cells.  Nothing came of this.  More
> serious was the attempt undertaken by Michal Woynicz, a member of
> 'Proletariat', who brought into the conspiracy the easy-going brother of one
> of the arrested, Antoni Janowicz.  He was a class-mate in the officers'
> school of a Russian Second Lieutenant, Piotr Fursa, with whom, along with
> other officers of the gendarmerie and high officials, he spent his time, and
> money, playing cards.  Fursa was the governor of the Tenth Pavilion, the
> prison in the Citadel.  Through Janowicz, Woynicz became one of the
> card-playing group which often met inside the Citadel.  He was thus able to
> find out the exact location of the prison cells, corridors and exits.  In a
> letter dated 26 April 1947, written in New York where she then was living,
> the widow of Michal Woynicz, the English novelist Ethel Lillian
> Boole-Woynicz, recounted this episode in the life of her husband as follows:
> [letter to be submitted in a separate e-Mail]
>     The traitor who informed the authorities about the escape plan was
> Pinski, in whom Maria Bohuszewicz confided all the details of the
> preparations for the escape, and who undertook to provide the escapees with
> places to hide in before they could be smuggled out of the country.  Michal
> Woynicz, who, unknown to his wife, was an active member of 'Proletariat' (he
> said as much to Byelanovsky after his arrest) was exiled without trial for
> five years to eastern Siberia whence he later escaped to England."
> 
> "The Origins Of Polish Socialism, The History and Ideas of the First Polish
> Socialist Party 1878-1886", by Lucjan Blit (Cambridge, At The University
> Press, 1971, pp.135-137).
> 
> Regards,
> Dana Scott 




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