The kidnappers had starved and beaten him, cut off his ears, ripped off his fingernails, and forced him to keep his head in a dark, cold hole in the ground as temperatures dropped to 20 and 30 degrees below zero.
While it has been said that Harbin was a "paradise in the twenties,"[4] the Japanese occupation and the presence of 100,000-200,000 White Russian émigrés brought civilian crime lords.
[citation needed] Protests by the Jewish communities of Harbin and Shanghai to Japanese vice-foreign minister Shigemitsu Mamoru had no effect.
Several weeks later, Rodzaevsky successfully pled for their release by claiming the plot, which was devised by his top lieutenant Martinoff, was only motivated by a "patriotic" agenda.
[1] These residents moved to Shanghai, other Chinese cities not under Japanese control, or even back to the Soviet Union, despite the fact that many had come to China fleeing persecution there.