Memoirs of a Jewish Prisoner of the Gulag

Memoirs of a Jewish Prisoner of the Gulag PDF Author: Zvi Preigerzon
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644699060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Zvi Preigerzon wrote memoirs about his time in the Gulag in 1958, long before Solzhenitsyn and without any knowledge of the other publications on this subject. It was one of the first eyewitness accounts of the harsh reality of Soviet Gulags. Even after the death of Stalin, when the whole Gulag system was largely disbanded, writing about them could be regarded as an act of heroism. Preigerzon attempted to document and analyze his own prison camp experience and portray the Jewish prisoners he encountered in forced labor camps. Among these people, we meet scientists, engineers, famous Jewish writers and poets, young Zionists, a devoted religious man, a horse wagon driver, a Jewish singer of folk songs, and many, many others. As Preigerzon put it, “Each one had his own story, his own soul, and his own tragedy.”

Memoirs of a Jewish Prisoner of the Gulag

Memoirs of a Jewish Prisoner of the Gulag PDF Author: Zvi Preigerzon
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644699060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book Here

Book Description
Zvi Preigerzon wrote memoirs about his time in the Gulag in 1958, long before Solzhenitsyn and without any knowledge of the other publications on this subject. It was one of the first eyewitness accounts of the harsh reality of Soviet Gulags. Even after the death of Stalin, when the whole Gulag system was largely disbanded, writing about them could be regarded as an act of heroism. Preigerzon attempted to document and analyze his own prison camp experience and portray the Jewish prisoners he encountered in forced labor camps. Among these people, we meet scientists, engineers, famous Jewish writers and poets, young Zionists, a devoted religious man, a horse wagon driver, a Jewish singer of folk songs, and many, many others. As Preigerzon put it, “Each one had his own story, his own soul, and his own tragedy.”

Against All Hope

Against All Hope PDF Author: Armando Valladares
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1893554198
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
Presents an account of the author's over twenty years in Fidel Castro's tropical gulag as a result of his philosophical and religious opposition to communism. This book gives a picture of the Cuba that he lived in and tells of how his deep Christian faith kept him from abandoning hope during the most evil treatment.

Man Is Wolf to Man

Man Is Wolf to Man PDF Author: Janusz Bardach
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520221529
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Originally published in hardcover in 1998.

Journey Into the Land of the Zeks and Back

Journey Into the Land of the Zeks and Back PDF Author: I︠U︡liĭ Margolin
Publisher:
ISBN: 0197502148
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 649

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Book Description
Journey into the land of the Zeks and back -- The road to the West.

Tell The West

Tell The West PDF Author: Jerzy G. Gliksman
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 178625719X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 517

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Book Description
Born 1902 in Warsaw and a law student in Warsaw and Paris, author Jerzy Gliksman became active in the Bund’s youth organization and in its political party in 1917, eventually becoming a member of the Bund’s Central Committee. He was voted in as one of the Bund’s councilmen in Warsaw during the elections for city council. His brother Viktor, also a Bundist, was arrested and executed by the Soviet authorities and, in 1939 and 1940, Gliksman was also arrested and imprisoned by the Soviet authorities. In 1943, following the Warsaw ghetto uprising and the suicide of Shmuel Arthur Zygelbojm, Gliksman initiated a large demonstration on behalf of the millions of Jews who had already been murdered. He emigrated to the United States in 1946, where he died in 1958. This fascinating book, one of the first of its kind, tells of the awful, inhuman Gulag system in the USSR which was widely unknown beyond the “Iron Curtain”.

Belomor

Belomor PDF Author: Julie S. Draskoczy
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1618119346
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Containing analyses of everything from prisoner poetry to album covers, Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag moves beyond the simplistic good/evil paradigm that often accompanies Gulag scholarship. While acknowledging the normative power of Stalinism—an ethos so hegemonic it wanted to harness the very mechanisms of inspiration—the volume also recognizes the various loopholes offered by artistic expression. Perhaps the most infamous project of Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan, the Belomor construction was riddled by paradox, above all the fact that it created a major waterway that was too shallow for large crafts. Even more significant, and sinister, is that the project won the backing of famous creative luminaries who enthusiastically professed the doctrine of self-fashioning. Belomor complicates our understanding of the Gulag by looking at both prisoner motivation and official response from multiple angles, thereby offering a more expansive vision of the labor camp and its connection to Stalinism.

Stalin's Italian Prisoners of War

Stalin's Italian Prisoners of War PDF Author: Maria Teresa Giusti
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633863562
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
This book reconstructs the fate of Italian prisoners of war captured by the Red Army between August 1941 and the winter of 1942-43. On 230.000 Italians left on the Eastern front almost 100.000 did not come back home. Testimonies and memoirs from surviving veterans complement the author's intensive work in Russian and Italian archives. The study examines Italian war crimes against the Soviet civilian population and describes the particularly grim fate of the thousands of Italian military internees who after the 8 September 1943 Armistice had been sent to Germany and were subsequently captured by the Soviet army to be deported to the USSR. The book presents everyday life and death in the Soviet prisoner camps and explains the particularly high mortality among Italian prisoners. Giusti explores how well the system of prisoner labor, personally supervised by Stalin, was planned, starting in 1943. A special focus of the study is antifascist propaganda among prisoners and the infiltration of the Soviet security agencies in the camps. Stalin was keen to create a new cohort of supporters through the mass political reeducation of war prisoners, especially middle-class intellectuals and military élite. The book ends with the laborious diplomatic talks in 1946 and 1947 between USSR, Italy, and the Holy See for the repatriation of the surviving prisoners.

When the Menorah Fades

When the Menorah Fades PDF Author: Zvi Preigerzon
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644692503
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 537

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Book Description
When the Menorah Fades is a fictionalized account of the town of Hadiach, Ukraine, a small Jewish community destroyed by Nazi occupation during World War II. Based on interviews with the surviving residents of Hadiach, Zvi Preigerzon imagines the everyday experiences of ordinary Jewish people during the war. Interweaved with Hebrew and Yiddish expressions and songs, biblical metaphors, and Kabbalistic spiritual elements, a story emerges: resistance in the face of unimaginable cruelty. A former prisoner of Stalin’s Gulag, Preigerzon wrote this book in complete secrecy, even hiding its existence from his own family. It was originally published under a pen name in Hebrew in 1966 and now appears in English with an introduction by the author’s grandson.

Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back

Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back PDF Author: Julius Margolin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197502164
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 649

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Book 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.

Unbroken Spirit

Unbroken Spirit PDF Author: Yosef Mendelevich
Publisher: Gefen Books
ISBN: 9789652295637
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
At age twenty-two, Yosef Mendelevich participated in an attempt to hijack a plane to the West an act designed to raise awareness about the desperate plight of Soviet Jews. He was arrested before the plane ever left the ground and served twelve years in the Soviet gulag. This is the story of one man s resistance against tyranny, and his daily struggle to retain his Jewishness and his humanity in a system built to extinguish both. This is a testament to the strength of the human soul and an inspiration to us all.