Hundreds of kilometers of forests to overcome, and on the way - herds of hungry wolves, deadly frost and military patrols. The chances of escaping from the Soviet labor camp were slim. However, there was no shortage of desperate people, ready to do anything to make their dream of freedom come true. Few have succeeded. Those who were caught faced death in agony.
Almost every prisoner of the Soviet labor camp had his own story to tell about the fugitives who made a desperate attempt to regain freedom. Few of them ended happily…
The prisoners of the Soviet labor camps were subjected to inhuman torture. Illustration from the book "Drawings from the Gulag" by D. Baldaev
The Russians did not tolerate resistance, and the Siberian forests and the ubiquitous frost gave them the worst instincts. They rounded up the fugitives, and when they caught up with them, they sent the unfortunates back to the place of execution. There, their punishment awaited their inevitable punishment, which made a shot in the back of the head an act of grace.
He dug his own grave
Michał Krupa, a participant in the defensive war, arrested in 1939 by the Soviets on suspicion of spying for the Germans and sent to Siberia to the Pechora labor camp, was one of the few "lucky people" who managed to get free. He miraculously survived - most of the inmates from this camp did not even survive a year. Years later, he wrote down his memoirs from his imprisonment. In them he told exactly what was possible for an attempted escape. In the book "Shallow Graves in Siberia" he reported:
There was a young Russian named Waśka in our labor camp. He was very impulsive, he was bathed in hot water (…). On the first spring, when the water level in the river rose and we were camping in the forest to increase work efficiency, he made a decision to flee:now or never (...).
In the darkness he jumped into the swollen river and managed to swim to the opposite bank. He hoped the guards would find him dead, since there had been a lot of drowning this time of year. (...) A patrol found him. He was brought back to the camp and brought before Commissioner Kuryła. This one circled around him, thundering louder and louder about the disastrous escape attempts. He stated that the punishment must be commensurate with the crime.
What did the sadistic commissioner mean by that? He ordered the fugitive to the square and her to dig a hole. Two days later, when the bore was two meters deep, he personally came to evaluate it. A terrified, terribly tired prisoner was waiting for a shot to the back of the head. He did not live to see it.
Kuryło, with a vindictive smile on his lips, ordered the guards to push Waśka into the trench, and then cover the hole with a heavy wooden cover. The fugitive was practically buried alive.
After a week of isolation, Waśka only dreamed of dying as soon as possible. From his prison, he insulted the guards. In revenge, they let him inside two rats "for company". After another seven days, however, Kuryla's conscience moved. As reported by Krupa:
The cover has been opened. The commandant looked at the battered, partially exposed body and even he took pity on Waśka. He ordered the guards to take him out. They covered him, trembling all over, gave him bread and water, but he could not swallow anything. His arms and legs were completely stiff with the cold. That evening he returned to our barrack.
The next day the ill-fated fugitive died. He was buried in a grave he had dug for himself - and with him three other inmates who gave up the ghost that night.
"To the glory of our beloved Stalin"
An even worse fate befell four Uzbeks who, on impulse, decided to flee (one of the guards lost his life then) and for a week they successfully hid from the manhunt. When they were finally surrounded, they refused to give up without a fight. They opened fire, killing two Soviet soldiers and wounding three more. In his book "Shallow Graves in Siberia", Krupa recalled:
Commissioner Kuryło issued special orders:fugitives should be brought to the camp as soon as possible. Apparently, he decided to put on a public spectacle of punishment as a warning to other prisoners. (...) The punishment he invented was a product of his sadistic mind and wild imagination.
The interior of a barrack in a Soviet labor camp.
The fugitives, stripped naked, were thrown in the labor camp into cages where they were awaiting execution. This was to be accompanied by a special shell. Michał Krupa described:
In the middle of the camp square there was a pillar about two and a half meters, to which a wagon wheel was attached. Four ropes with a loop are tied to the wheel. Barbed wire was stretched around the pole on the ground and covered with white sheets.
At seven o'clock on a Sunday morning we were driven out to the square. Kuryło arrived at eight o'clock in a festive outfit:red velvet pants, a white shirt and a red tie (...). »These four disgraced the red banner by killing three guards decorated by Stalin. I gave the order to wash away this disgrace with the blood of bandits. To the glory of our beloved Stalin, I am opening an execution! «.
Hammer and Sickle
The sentence was carried out using… a sickle and a hammer. The guards, beating almost blindly, forced the prisoners tied to the pole to run around the material covering the barbed wire. When one of the Uzbeks fell, the second act of the macabre spectacle began.
Kuryło must have had a great time being the ruler of life and death. Following the example of the Roman emperors, he organized games at the expense of the prisoners. As Michał Krupa recalled in "Shallow graves in Siberia":
We turned towards the commander, we were begging him for mercy, but he, beaming with joy and excitement, jerked his thumb down. In a flash, the blade of the sickle severed his head from the convict's body twisting in convulsions.
The hysterical guard overwhelmed with hysterical laughter and painted the four corners of the sheet with blood dripping off the sheet. Once he had satisfied his murderous desires, he kicked his head towards the guard with a hammer that smashed her to a pulp. These beastly scenes were repeated at every prison.
The shocking accounts of Krupa, who narrowly escaped death by himself, shed new light on the horrific fate of those imprisoned in Soviet labor camps. And how many similar stories have been lost forever in the darkness of history - including witnesses who did not survive the Siberian ordeal? We'll probably never know that…
Source:
The text is based on the book by by Michał Krupa "shallow graves in Siberia" , which has just been released by the Rebis publishing house. It is an extraordinary story about the will to survive of a man who managed to escape from a Soviet labor camp to Afghanistan, full of dramatic experiences and dangers.