Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps by Robert Conquest

Author:Robert Conquest [Conquest, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Communism, Concentration Camp, Gulag, History, Holocaust, Jewish, Judaism, Kolyma, Stalin
Google: eW0sAQAAMAAJ
Amazon: B083HDYJRY
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1979-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mrs Ginzburg, who was also eventually saved by a doctor after only a few months at Elgen, notes that any claim to medical knowledge was an enormous help.

'When they start filling up your forms, say that before you began studying the arts you did four years' medical training.'

'Why?' I asked, surprised.

'They need nurses here. They will take your medical training into account, and you'll be a nurse, under a roof, instead of having to hoe the ground and fell trees.'

'But it's not true. I'm not competent to be a nurse.'

'Of course you are. Training has no significance here, all the camp women need is a decent humane person. You will be sorry for those who have reached their end and you won't take bribes from them.'

'What about treatment?'

'That's a joke. Here the only treatment consists in one or two days off work!'

'Well, I can't tell Jies.'

'Then you had better learn, hadn't you?' 4

This paid off, as it did in several other cases among our witnesses.

'"But I am not a doctor," I answered in bewilderment. '"Never mind that," said my friend, "you know how to write a prescription in Latin, don't you?" '"What have I to do with prescriptions?" '"You will write something in Latin in front of the chief doctor. This will make a good impression on him."' 31

By some such method, and given a great deal of luck into the bargain, a small proportion of Kolyma's inmates

survived. But it is well to record what a small number they were, what fate faced the majority.

For them the only escape was death. One prisoner reports a great wave of suicide, in September 1938, started by that of a professor of meteorology. But it was always easy to provoke the shot of a guard, and many did. Many, as we saw, were executed or beaten to death or merely killed for fun: one post-war prisoner says,

I was convinced that soldiers of the MVD must have been picked for their sadistic qualities. They had a completely free hand over us and would do anything, particularly when drunk, to make prisoners suffer. For instance, when going to or coming back from work in the usual columns of five, they would sometimes stop us in the middle of the road, unleash their dogs, and laugh uproariously as the dogs sank their fangs into the prisoners'legs. It was a time when they were absolutely free to do anything, even kill us—and get a reward for it. I have known them to call a man over to make a fire for them, or to bring them a mug of water when on sentry duty, and then kill the unfortunate under the pretext that the prisoner had crossed the 'no trespass' line. 31

Still, the majority died of mere freezing, hunger, polyavitaminosis and exhaustion, or in the routine of camp brutality, by that colder and more calculated violence of the mature Stalinist order. In 1939, one prisoner was allotted to the graveyard detail.

We started out, past the mine, past the punishment shack, uphill to the mound.

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