Gulags Like Nazi Death Camps Shifrin

The First Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union, by Avraham Shifrin. 1982

Soviet Gulag System Long After Stalin. Double Genocide Valid. Red=Brown

Some people think that Communism was a great idea until it went bad because of Stalin, and that the Gulag system was a product of Stalinism. Far from it. The Gulag system long preceded Stalin, and long survived him. The items in this book date from the 1970’s Brezhnev era.

This comprehensive catalogue, based upon the author’s experiences as well as eyewitness accounts, lists thousands of detention facilities, according to city, town, and region, in the USSR. The facilities are located not only in remote areas of the Soviet Union, but also population centers, including the USSR-seized Polish city of Lvov (Lwow, Lviv). (p. 80).

Many of the conditions of incarceration are no better than they were in the days of Stalin. For instance, in the notorious logging camps, prisoners toil long hours in 40 or 50 below Celsius weather. Owing to their meager and unbalanced diet, they experience scurvy (p. 167), if not avitaminosis.

A REBUKE TO THOSE JEWS WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT DOUBLE GENOCIDE, OR RED=BROWN

It has been argued that there were no death camps under the Communist system comparable to the Nazi death camps—to which admission guaranteed death. There certainly were, even in the 1970’s. (e. g., p. 31-on, 73, 228, 266, 269, 285). These included the camps where poorly protected or unprotected workers deal with uranium, facing very close to 100% mortality. Interestingly, one “ordinary” camp had a phrase praising work as a means of freedom—chillingly reminiscent of the ARBEIT MACHT FREI sign at Auschwitz. (p. 10).

MANY “ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE” UNDER COMMUNISM

Non-criminal prisoners are housed with common criminals (p. 88). They often face abuse, some organized by the prison staff, from the latter. Those incarcerated include political dissidents, nationalists advocating their homeland’s freedom from the Soviet empire, Jews (including the author) guilty of “Zionism” in wishing to emigrate from the USSR to Israel, etc.

MILITANT ATHEISM

Anti-religion and especially anti-Christianity has always been a staple of the political left, and, under Communism, it was honed to perfection. In psychiatric hospitals, those who believe in God are considered insane. The most commonly-mentioned offense for incarceration in the Soviet prisons and camps is professed belief in God and wanting to teach religion to one’s own children (p. 66, 155-156, 194, 200, and many more). One eyewitness describes such a situation as follows, “An atmosphere of hopelessness and despair reigned in the camps. Only the religious prisoners were able to stand above the human degradation. They believed that they were being tested by God and that they had to endure their sufferings. The others, however, fought each other over food or reduced themselves to acts of homosexuality or even sodomy.” (p. 167).

GULAG UPRISINGS

There have been quite a few large revolts against the unjust incarcerations and living conditions in the prisons and camps. (150, 152, 240-241, 298). Some of them were successful for a few days before being drowned in blood by Soviet forces or the KGB, the successor to the NKVD.
Shifrin warns leftists in the West who support, or are sympathetic to, Communism. He points out that the Communist secret police first killed the leftists. (p. 362).