Description
Under the Soviet regime, millions of zeks (prisoners) were incarcerated in the forced labor camps, the Gulag. There many died of starvation, disease, and exhaustion, and some were killed by criminals and camp guards. In 1939, as the Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland, many Polish citizens found themselves swept up by the Soviet occupation and sent into the Gulag. One such victim was Julius Margolin, a Pinsk-born Jewish philosopher and writer living in Palestine who was in Poland on family matters.Margolin's Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back offers a powerful, first-person account of one of the most shocking chapters of the violent twentieth century. Opening with the outbreak of World War II in Poland, Margolin relates its devastating impact on the Jews and his arrest and imprisonment in the Gulag system. During his incarceration from 1940 to 1945, he nearly died from starvation and overwork but was able to return to Western Europe and rejoin his family in Palestine. With a philosopher's astute analysis of man and society, as well as with humor, his memoir of flight, entrapment, and survival details the choices and dilemmas faced by an individual under extreme duress. Margolin's moving account illuminates universal issues of human rights under a totalitarian regime and ultimately the triumph of human dignity and decency.This translation by Stefani Hoffman is the first English-language edition of this classic work, originally written in Russian in 1947 and published in an abridged French version in 1949. Circulated in a Russian samizdat version in the USSR, it exerted considerable influence on the formation of the genre of Gulag memoirs and was eagerly read by Soviet dissidents. Timothy Snyder's foreword and Katherine Jolluck's introduction contextualize the creation of this remarkable account of a Jewish world ravaged in the Stalinist empire--and the life of the man who was determined to reveal the horrors of the gulag camps and the plight of the zeks to the world.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgementsGlossaryForeword by Timothy SnyderIntroduction by Katherine R. JolluckPrologueChapter 1 September 1939Chapter 2 EncircledChapter 3 The Story of a DisillusionmentChapter 4 Pinsk IntermezzoChapter 5 Elijah the ProphetChapter 6 The Pinsk PrisonChapter 7 The Wandering CoffinChapter 8 BBK [Baltic-White Sea Canal]Chapter 9 "Square Forty-Eight"Chapter 10 Rabguzhsila [Man/horsepower]Chapter 11 ConversationsChapter 12 Karelin's BrigadeChapter 13 DehumanizationChapter 14 Wood FellingChapter 15 The Medical SectorChapter 16 My Enemy LabanovChapter 17 Gardenberg's BrigadeChapter 18 Evening in the BarrackChapter 19 People at Square 48Chapter 20 Spring 1941Chapter 21 EtapChapter 22 AmnestyChapter 23 "You Must Work"Chapter 24 Ivan Aleksandrovich KuznetsovChapter 25 A Letter to EhrenburgChapter 26 KVCh [Cultural-Educational Sector]Chapter 27 Isaac the FifthChapter 28 Camp NeurosisChapter 29 In the BathhouseChapter 30 In the OfficeChapter 30a ThreeChapter 31 MaksikChapter 32 The Doctrine of HateChapter 33 An Invalid's LotChapter 34 The Brigade Leader of Chronic InvalidsChapter 35 The Road to the NorthChapter 36 KotlasChapter 37 Block NineChapter 38 Block FiveChapter 39 ReleaseChapter 40 ConclusionThe Road to the WestChapter 1 SlavgorodChapter 2 The Freedom TrainChapter 3 Non Omnis MoriarChapter 4 The End of MariaChapter 5 September 1946Chapter 6 Heliopolis
