PRISON

Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

—Rev. 2:10

4760 Largest Prison

The largest prison in the world is Kharkhov Prison, in the U. S. S. R., which has at times accommodated 40,000 prisoners.

4761 Longest Time In Prison

The world’s longest-serving prisoner was discharged from an American prison after serving for 66 years. He complained about the bad language of modern prisoners.

But the world’s longest-serving war prisoner was a French soldier. The story is as follows:

The Russian Government kept a Frenchman in war captivity for a century and a day. This was the longest war captivity on record. Savain was captured when Napoleon was invading Russia in 1812. He was then never allowed to return and the French government which succeeded Napoleon’s was indifferent to the fate of its subjects imprisoned abroad.

After 60 years of rigorous confinement, Savain was allowed to settle in a little hut under guard. In 1912—a full century and one day after capture—he was released by Death. He was buried in Saratov, and the entire town turned out in full force to escort him to the grave.

4762 Twelve More Years By Mistake

George E. Robinson was freed from the Ohio Penitentiary after serving twelve extra years by mistake. He had committed a crime, the penalty of which called for a maximum sentence of two years. How this mistake occurred is not known.

Asked about the offense for which he was sent to prison, Robinson said, “I pleaded quickly because I was told I’d get only one or two years. I am now fifty- three years old, and the twelve years I mistakenly spent in prison have taken from me the best years of my life.”

—Gospel Herald

4763 Oldest U. S. Convict

John Webber, 100, and believed to be America’s oldest convict, was buried in 1976. Webber, who spent 51 years in prison for the slaying of his child, died in the prison hospital.

The Rev. Eugene Yoris, who officiated at the funeral services, asked: “What does society want? The last drop of blood from a man for his mistake?”

4764 Prisoners Complain: No Ice Cream

Richfield, Utah (UPI)—Prisoners in the Sevier county jail are already complaining about the new $200,000 facility because it doesn’t have any windows.

The 19 inmates, who moved into the new jail said they now can’t yell to the owner of Craig’s ice cream shop across the street to get ice cream cones delivered to their cells.

4765 For Whistling: Fifty Years Solitary

Marie-Augustin of Brittany was a victim of a most outrageous miscarriage of justice. He was arrested in the spring of 1786—on a blank warrant signed by King Louis XVI—and charged with having whistled at Marie Antoinette as she was about to take a seat in the royal lodge of the Comedie Francaise. The twenty-two-year-old youth was branded “a prisoner of state” and kept incommunicado in the prison of the Temple till 1790, when he was secretly transferred to the dungeon of Lourdes.

The outbreak of the French Revolution and the doom of the royal pair had no effect on Pelier’s detention. He languished in a cell for another twenty-four years before his case was reopened. Incidental to Napoleon’s overthrow in 1814, a newly-installed Royal Procurator, overhauling his prison records, found that Pelier was still incarcerated in solitary. With commendable zeal and firmness the official ordered an immediate release.

Unfortunately Napoleon chose this exact moment to break out of Elba and to return to France. In the resulting upheaval the poor prisoner was again forgotten. His day of freedom did not dawn till 1836, when Marie Antoinette, the original whistlee, had been in her grave for forty-three years.

At long last the authorities dealt kindly with the seventy-two-year-old “criminal.” As an “act of grace” they belatedly restored to him his landed property in Brittany.

4766 Figures On Prisoners-Of-War

The total number of men taken prisoner in World War II may never be accurately known, but for all the belligerents it may have exceeded 15,000,000, not counting those involved in the final surrender of the armed forces of Ger many, Japan, and their satellites.

The Western Allies captured more than 4,500,000 enemy troops, all but about 50,000 of them in the European and Mediterranean fighting, and disarmed several millions more when the Axis countries surrendered. The total captured by the Russians, which included large numbers of Hungarian and Romanian troops, was probably of the order of 4,000,000 to 5,000,000.

Germany and her satellites suffered the greatest number of prisoner-of-war casualties, the losses being especially high in the fighting in Russia and in the final campaigns in Western Europe. Several hundred Italians were Allied prisoners-of-war at one time.

The Germans took about five million prisoners. Not less than 1,500,000 Frenchman were held as prisoners-of-war from 1940 until near the end of the war.

4767 Epigram On Prison

•     The warden of a Midwest prison sent a note around to inmates asking for suggestions on the kind of party they’d recommend to celebrate its 25th aniversary. The prisoners all had the same idea—OPEN HOUSE.

See also: Judgment ; Justice ; Persecution.