Gulags Like Nazi Death Camps DEFINITIVE WORK Buca

Vorkuta, by Edward Buca.

Jewish Inmate of Soviet Gulags and Nazi German Camps Says Gulags Were Worse! Some Gulags Had 100% Mortality, Just Like the Nazi Extermination Camps

Author Buca was part of the wave of Polish deportees that was part of the second Soviet occupation of Poland (1944-on). The teenaged Edward Buca had fought in the AK (ARMIA KRAJOWA) near Lwow (Lviv, Lvov). After the Kresy (Poland’s eastern half) had been given away to the Soviet Union as part of the Teheran-Yalta betrayal of Poland by the West, he found himself defined as a direct enemy of the Soviet Union. Arrested in August 1945, he spent time in various Lvov-area newly-Soviet prisons before being dispatched to Vorkuta (Workuta).

WHAT IS BETTER—TO DIE QUICKLY IN A NAZI EXTERMINATION CAMP OR TO DIE A SLOW, AGONIZING DEATH IN THE SOVIET GULAG?

Vorkuta was a largely coal-mining forced-labor camp in the Soviet Arctic, north of the Ural Mountains, and some 1,200 miles northeast of Moscow. Probably the only positive experience there was the sight of the northern lights. (p. 64). The rest was unbridled horror: “The hard work in the arctic cold and the poor food wore away our energy and our health. After only three weeks most of the prisoners were broken men, interested in nothing but eating. They behaved like animals, disliked and suspected everyone else, seeing in yesterday’s friend a competitor in the struggle for survival.” (p. 79). “Patients usually tried to conceal a death for three or four days in order to get the dead man’s rations for themselves…until they could no longer stand the stench.” (p. 150). “So much of Siberia had been built with the hands of prisoners.” (p. 330).

A JEWISH INMATE WOULD RATHER BE IN A GERMAN CAMP THAN A SOVIET CAMP (Sic)!

The Soviet concentration camps have sometimes been favorably compared to the Nazi German ones by soft-on-Communism western liberals and by advocates of Holocaust supremacism. But at least one Jewish inmate of both would beg to differ: “`Well, frankly, I preferred the German camps…there was a quick way out there, a gruesome death. There’s no quick way out here, no sudden execution, just slow death from exhaustion. Who can survive twenty or twenty-five years in these camps? Nobody!'” (p. 222).

THE FALSE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN NAZI GERMAN DEATH CAMPS AND THE SOVIET GULAGS

Some have argued that there was no Gulag equivalent to the Nazi death camps–no camps to which admission absolutely guaranteed death. In fact, there were. One of them was located in Novaya Zemlya, to which Buca dreaded to be sent for this very reason. (pp. 325-326).

THE VORKUTA INMATE POPULATION

There were relatively few Poles at Vorkuta at the time (p. 80, 99-101, 190-192, 197, 205, etc.). Most of the inmates were Ukrainians, especially members of the fascist-separatist OUN-UPA from the Kresy. Buca got along well with them. Considering the fact that the OUN-UPA had just completed a genocide of tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of mostly-defenseless civilian Poles, this is remarkable. What kept them from knocking off one more LYAKH (Pole)?

The death of Stalin in early 1953 created a gradual thaw. Earlier revolts, though ending in failure reminiscent of that of Spartacus against the Romans (p. 177), had inspired others. Some of the Russian revolt leaders even escaped execution (contrary to the suppositions of Anne Applebaum in her GULAG), and were eventually freed. (p. 175). Buca was inspired to write a letter of protest against his unending imprisonment. (pp. 256-257). He himself led a revolt, yet escaped the death penalty.

ONE LEFT-WING ACCUSATION AFFTER ANOTHER

Buca was finally freed in 1958. But the same western betrayal that had given away his domicile to the Soviets had also created a puppet state of the remainder of Poland. He found himself facing revived charges before a Communist Polish court. Once convicted, his new term was reduced to time served in the Gulags. He remained under constant suspicion until 1970. In 1971, he fled Poland to Sweden, and then emigrated to Canada.