When the temperature in Kolyma fell below minus fifty-one degrees, the prisoners were allowed to stay in barracks. At minus fifty, they spent the day outside at work. Nothing protected them from the frost - they were poorly dressed, hungry and exhausted. Years later, one of them described his experiences.
In 1940, Maciej Żołnierczyk was sentenced to 25 years in labor camps. When he reached the "Cursed Island", as the prisoners called a group of Soviet camps in the Kolyma basin, he was sent to work in the mines.
The exhausting work, the cold, the cruelty of the guards, the daily hourly walks to the mining site - it was all terrifying enough. Soon, however, fellow prisoners with longer experience began to scare him with the coming winter. They didn't even have to say anything. As Żołnierczyk reported in his memoirs, published in the collection “Kołyma. Poles in Soviet labor camps ” just look at them:
There were also a few who survived last winter in Kolyma, and they were people without noses and ears. They looked like walking dead heads. Mostly they were nacmeni (not Russians - note by A. W.) from a very warm south, and there were masses in labor camps. Despite this disability, they had to work like the rest. They had rotten noses and ears, their cheeks were covered with dark spots, and some had their noses and ears half-frosted, sore and dark red .
"Our clothes did not protect at all"
In the fall, the Soldier found out that the tales of his companions of misery were not exaggerated at all. "In October, a lot of snow fell and there was a huge frost, which it held with varying degrees all the time," he recalled. He himself felt completely "depleted of life-giving energy" at that time. He barely shuffled his feet.
There was no escaping the frost. He even ruled in barracks or tents where prisoners lived. "During sleep the hair froze against the walls of the tent, because the two barrels in which wood was briefly burned were not a sufficient source of heat "- said another former prisoner, Anna Mieczkowska. For the exiles, the heat was just a distant memory.
In winter, temperatures in Kolyma sometimes dropped to minus sixty degrees Celsius.
The clothes that were assigned to prisoners, i.e. padded caftans - tielogrejki , did not protect against the cold. - and pants ( brjuki ). They covered their heads with cotton caps with ear flaps. They wore shallow galoshes on their feet, tied with rags for "warming". The hands that suffered the most, however, were covered only with year-round, linen gloves. One day, the Soldier learned about it painfully. As he noted:
We recently cleared snow from equipment and buildings in the priisku, or mine. On my way back, I had my pickaxe and crowbar on my shoulder, as usual when I returned to the labor camp. (...) When I was reaching the labor camp I felt that my right hand, which I was holding an iron crowbar, was like stone . The fingers of the right hand were simply glued to the iron crowbar. The mitt of my right hand was completely worn and torn, so that I was holding the iron with my bare hand.
"I cried in pain like a baby"
The Pole tried to save his hand by rubbing it with snow and putting it into a basin with water and ice. After a while it started to thaw, but he didn't regain feeling in his fingers. The whole hand ached and hell. The following days only worsened the situation. As he wrote in his memoirs, published in the collection "Kolyma. Poles in Soviet labor camps ” :
My fingers hurt terribly and turned cherry red. After a few days, the cherry color turned black and the fingers began to drip - there was a clear line where the frostbite extends. The frostbitten parts rotted completely leaving protruding black bones . It turned out that I had frostbitten the whole little finger, half the ring finger and the end of the middle finger, index finger and thumb.
Nothing could be done - the soldier was sent for surgery. The doctor tried to give him an anesthetic injection, but the prisoner mentioned that it didn't work at all. “Later, with metal tweezers, he began to tear out dead particles and black knuckles. One by one my fingers fell into the bucket with a thud, ”says the Pole. "After each cut, I jumped like a fish pulled out of water and cried like a baby in pain" .
The curiosity is based on the book "Kolyma. Poles in Soviet labor camps ” (Fronda Publishing House 2019).
He had a long recovery after this monstrous operation. After a few days, his fingers became festered and the wounds had to be cut open to clean them. As soon as he returned to his relative form, he was ordered to return to work. Although he was assigned lighter tasks, he could not even cope with them. Soon the camp staff began to accuse him of having frostbitten his fingers intentionally so that he would not have to work. He himself was already a income - as the prisoners who are "about to finish" were called.
Everything indicates that the soldier would not survive in Kolyma much longer. He could, however, speak of luck - as early as 1942 he was released from the labor camp to join the Polish Army formed in the west. Many others did not live to see this point and were forever rested under a blanket of everlasting snow.
Source:
Trivia is the essence of our website. Short materials devoted to interesting anecdotes, surprising details from the past, strange news from the old press. Reading that will take you no more than 3 minutes, based on single sources. This particular material is based on the book:
- Collective author, Kolyma. Poles in Soviet labor camps , Fronda 2019 publishing house.
Buy the book cheaper at the Publisher's bookstore:
