Black Hole of Baku

39th Brigade at Enzeli after the evacuation from Baku

The Black Hole of Baku is the name for the imprisonment and torture of British prisoners at Baku, Azerbaijan in 1920, as part of the Russian Civil War.

Background

Royal Navy sailors volunteered to prepare the defence of Enzeli, supporting the White Russians against Russian Bolshevik forces. Under Commander Bruce Fraser, the sailors were moved from cleaning up the beaches at the Dardanelles, and sent to Batumi, where they boarded a small train, with three sliding-door goods wagons. After two days travel towards Enzeli, the train was ambushed, and the driver refused to go any further. They returned to Batumi, and loaded onto another ship, which took them to Izmir. They then took a train to Baghdad, and walked the rest of the trip, across Persia, north to Enzeli, accompanied by a few pack-camels and a Gurkha escort. Upon reaching Enzeli, the Gurkhas and camels turned back, and they were left in Enzeli to build up fortifications. Stan Smith, one of the survivors, arrived at Enzeli on his 21st birthday, and described the town as "a few old huts, a couple of houses, and a pier sticking out into the Caspian sea".

Their job while at Enzeli was not just to prepare fortifications using weapons from ex-Royal Navy ships, but also repair ships used by Anton Denikin. However, Denikin's ships were in such a poor condition that they could not be moved, and so the group had to move once again, this time to Baku, where they found that the ships had not been used or maintained for several years, and were "thick with rust". As they set to work repairing the guns and engines, Baku was overrun by Bolshevik forces, who captured the sailors. Once captured, they were tied up, lined up on the quay, and stripped naked. Their pockets were emptied of their possessions, and their clothes were returned. They were then marched, through jeering crowds, to the prison of Byrloft Chyrma. The prisoners were placed into two adjoining cells, measuring sixteen feet square each. The cells had a bare earth floor, and no furniture, blankets or bedding.

Imprisonment

The prisoners were not fed until noon the following day, when they were given half a slice of black bread, and thin, watery soup, or rice. They were then taken outside, where they witnessed approximately forty other prisoners being executed – the women by disembowelment, followed by shooting, while the men were first tortured with acid "so strong that when they removed their arms, the flesh hung down like huge gauntlets". This spectacle was repeated many times before the prisoners were released. The Russian government at the time felt that the prisoners were being treated "most humanely", whereas the British believes that any civilians being held were "receiving most inhuman treatment".

They were also forced to work, carrying sacks of millet from railway trucks at the local station, to carts, but many of the men were too weak to do so – as a result, they were placed back in their cells on reduced rations of a raw fish, the size of a herring, and a handful of nuts, each day. Order began to break down amongst the prisoners, but the Commander rapidly restored it by enforcing a roll call for food rations. Water was only given out through a single tap in the courtyard, which was accessible for half an hour each day. The same area, and the same half hour each day was allotted for ablutions, which consisted of the same tap, and a hole in the ground. Lice were a huge problem – the prisoners tried to remove the lice from their clothing using their teeth, but guards and other prisoners would throw packets of lice into the cell through the grating in the door, so it was an ongoing problem. Typhus and Typhoid were rife.

One of the few facts released at the time was that of the treatment of one of the civilian prisoners, Vice-Consul Hewelcke, who was subject to mock executions. No information was released about the Royal Naval prisoners by the government, indeed, the entire group were presumed dead.

Deaths

The first death was a man known as Marsh, a mechanic, who used a piece of glass to slit his wrists. The guards fought over his clothing, and the body was left in the cell with the other prisoners for four days. This happened at least four more times, with the body beginning to decompose each time.

Release

After a period of roughly two years of captivity, the Georgian army had held the Bolshevik forces at a nearby river, and a minister of Georgia came to visit the prison to discuss the possible release of Georgian prisoners with Astare Nasarate, the head guard of the prison. A member of the Naval Party was a Georgian interpreter, and his release was expected to be immediate – the interpreter was, surely enough, released, and managed to smuggle out a locket containing a picture of Commander Fraser's mother, by swallowing it.

As a result of that, the rest of the British prisoners were released. They were transferred to a nearby disused school, and given some horse meat and black bread, as well as a single bar of soap – which had little effect on the lice. Eventually, they were taken to a train, and placed in goods trucks for the trip to the Georgian border, where they disembarked, walked across a bridge, and re-embarked on a passenger train under the escort of a man they knew as Colonel Stokes. They were given a small meal of quarter of a slice of meat, bread, and chocolate. When they arrived at Tiflis, their old clothes were burned, and their diet was slowly increased. They then moved on to Batumi, where they boarded HMS Iron Duke, and were completely shaved and cleaned, given another new set of clothes, and met the Admiral, who thanked them for their service on behalf of the Navy. They were then transferred to a specially fitted out sloop, HMS Heliotrope, for the journey back to Britain through the Mediterranean. Two more men died on the way back, at Bighi Hospital, Malta. There were only twelve survivors from the initial twenty-nine volunteers. The affair was kept largely secret from the press, but as a reward, the survivors gathered together enough money to buy Commander Fraser a ceremonial sword, which he later used at all ceremonial occasions as Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet.