Vorkuta labor camp

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Location sketch (after 1950)

The Vorkutlag ( Russian Воркутинский исправительно-трудовой лагерь , ИТЛ abbreviated, ITL , short Воркутлаг , German Workutaer corrective labor camp , shortly WorkutLag) was a corrective labor camp (ITL) of the Gulag system's for the politically persecuted and prisoners of war in the Soviet Union . The camp was located north of the city of Vorkuta in the north of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the Komi .

history

The Vorkuta-ITL - one of the largest and toughest forced labor camps in the Gulag - officially existed on May 10, 1938 and was still in operation in the 1960s. Even before 1938 there was a corrective labor camp in the area, which was set up as part of the so-called Ukhta expedition along the Pechora River . That is why the camp was officially called Vorkuta-Petschora-ITL or WorkutPetschLag for short. As early as 1929, expeditions were sent to the ASSR republic of the Komi to find out whether the large amounts of mineral resources that had been suspected since tsarist times were to be found there. These expeditions to the north of the Urals consisted of geologists who came from concentration camps and who were promised their release, and members of the OGPU secret police . After test drilling in 1931 at the latest, enormous deposits of raw materials were detected and, according to estimates from 1937, about 37.5 billion tons of hard coal was found in the region around Vorkuta in addition to natural gas , crude oil and the like. a. to be expected. Due to the high demand for coal in the course of the forced industrialization of the Soviet Union , a settlement was built in 1929 in the inhospitable area of ​​Vorkuta, which hardly any worker would have entered voluntarily, by the approximately 9,000 forced laborers who were displaced there to mine the raw materials. From 1948 to 1954 the special camp of MWD No. 6, the RetschLag (river camp), belonged to the Vorkuta camp complex.

Occupancy

Up to 73,000 people were detained at the same time in Vorkuta labor camp. In total, there were well over a million men and women of various nationalities who were sent as prisoners or prisoners of war to Vorkuta for forced labor. Of these, around 250,000 were killed in a variety of ways. The exact number of German prisoners is unclear. Karl Wilhelm Fricke assumes that around 40,000 to 50,000 Germans from the Soviet occupation zone / GDR were sentenced by Soviet military tribunals from 1945 to 1955 , of which 20,000 to 25,000 were deported to the Soviet Union. Other figures speak of only 5,000 displaced persons, about a third of whom are said to have come to Vorkuta. There are also thousands of Russian Germans who lived in the Soviet Union before the Second World War and were imprisoned after the German attack in 1941 , as well as the prisoners of war imprisoned in the Soviet Union . However, not all prisoners from the latter groups came to Vorkuta, which is why the exact number is difficult to determine (of the 370,000 Volga Germans , for example, it was about 13,000). What is certain, however, is that the Vorkuta forced labor camp became the main destination for German prisoners in the post-war period.

Reasons for detention, conviction, and disappearance

Lithuanian Memorial (2006)

While at the end of the 1930s almost exclusively Soviet citizens, especially Ukrainians , were imprisoned, who were persecuted and imprisoned mainly for their political views, the picture of the composition of the camp changed in the course of World War II and the following period. Now, regardless of age, gender or occupation, an increasing number of German prisoners of war and other German citizens who were supposed or actual members or helpers of the NSDAP or generally “potentially dangerous Germans”, for example Social Democrats , came to Vorkuta. In addition, there were actual or alleged collaborators from Eastern European countries, such as former members of the Soviet army , who were themselves previously in German captivity and were accused of treason, as well as other East Central Europeans who did not want to submit to the new communist rulers. The prisoners were either sentenced to the death penalty or to several years of forced labor. Those convicted after the war were mostly prosecuted under Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code , which contained extensive grounds such as “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda”, “counter-revolutionary activities” and “gang formation”. The confessions were mostly extorted after hours of torture. Sometimes the reason for the arrest was purely arbitrary, as the example of a Romanian who was arrested and abducted as a certain "Pedru", but neither called nor knew anyone who bore that name.

It is undisputed that the arrest, conviction and deportation of so many people were also motivated by economic motives. It is also clear that Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, in his position as People's Commissar for Internal Affairs and thus as the highest responsible for the entire Gulag system, always complained that the camps had too few workers to meet the needs of the state . It was Beria himself who repeatedly corrected the delivery quantities of resources to be achieved upwards. In 1941, for example, he stipulated that the yield from coal mining had to increase tenfold between 1942 and 1948. These plans increased the need for forced labor.

Conditions of detention

Even during the transport of prisoners, for example from the Soviet Zone / GDR, the conditions were catastrophic. It happened, for example, that three people were locked in one-man cells of an unheated train disguised as a mail car, so that only one could sit while the others stood until they collapsed from exhaustion at some point. The food was completely inadequate. The daily ration was just a handful of salted herrings, 300 g bread and a cup of water. Transports from Western Europe had to be switched to the broad-gauge railway in the Belarusian border town of Brest , which took three to five days, during which the prisoners were housed in a dilapidated prison. Cold, iron beds without mattresses or blankets and “ myriads ” of bedbugs made the prisoners hard. Similar conditions also prevailed at other intermediate stations.

Depending on the reason for the conviction, the prisoners were sent to different camps, either the WorkutLag or the Retschlag (aka river camp). The camp existed as a subordinate structural unit of the WorkutLag from January 27, 1948 to May 26, 1954. It mainly housed serious criminals, while the WorkutLag mainly housed prisoners for political offenses and minor crimes.

At their destination, the prisoners were exposed to the bitter cold of the Arctic Circle in winter. Temperatures of as low as −56 ° C and the storm of the Purga from September to May affected the deportees , who were mostly inadequately dressed. Only in summer were the temperatures bearable. The primitive wooden barracks, in which the prisoners also had to deal with tons of bedbugs and other vermin, could do little to withstand the cold. The Soviet rulers also knew that working at such temperatures would be difficult, which is why you only had to work outdoors when the temperature was above −36 ° C. If the temperature was below that, at least you didn't have to work outside. The typical everyday life was divided into 10-hour shifts, whereby the workflow was repeatedly interrupted by body searches and completeness checks, although the probability of escape was relatively low, because the chance of being able to survive after a successful escape in the arctic region was relatively low .

Newcomers to the camp were often victims of robberies by serious criminals who formed regular gangs. The camp management actually wanted to prevent this by changing the composition of the camps and working groups every three to six months with the intention of preventing fraternization and group formation. However, since some of the guards worked with prisoners, the raids were often tolerated. In addition, NKVD informers monitored the inmates and made sure that no conspiratorial groups formed. There were around two to three informers per warehouse department, but they were often exposed and then punished by lynching . The subsequent confession usually earned the “perpetrators” another 25 years of forced labor.

Physical hygiene was only possible to a limited extent in Vorkuta. Toothbrushes and toothpaste did not exist for years; Soap was only given out in small portions once a week. Showering was possible every day, but was only permitted when working underground. Medical care was also inadequate. There was hardly any medication or anesthetic . For example, doctors who were also arrested and who were still studying at the time of their arrest had to amputate a prisoner's toe without anesthesia or remove the appendix or kidney stones without anesthesia. In addition to injuries that were often self-inflicted in order to avoid the strenuous work at least for a while, the prisoners mostly suffered from deficiency diseases , as the food contained no or hardly any vitamin or protein components, was partially frozen or spoiled or radioactive due to the nearby nuclear test area Novaya Zemlya was contaminated.

After the Second World War, the rations for prisoners with 100% standard fulfillment looked something like this: 600 g (very watery) bread, 40 g fish or meat, 150–250 g cashew porridge (made from oatmeal, millet, buckwheat, barley, rye or wheat barley or, rarely, semolina), 5 g oil and 750 g cabbage, sauerkraut, sorrel or barley soup. In the first few years, rations were the only form of payment for the workers and were linked to compliance with labor standards. Those who did not reach the daily target received less food and had to try less hard the next day to meet the work norm. If the target was met or exceeded, the prisoners were offered additional food or special foods such as lemons or confectionery. From January 1, 1952, the system of payment was modified, since the workers now actually received a small amount of income in addition to the rations, which they could invest in additional food in the canteen or save.

It was an advantage for a prisoner to speak Russian or another Eastern European language in order to be able to communicate with other prisoners or the guards, although this was not very common, especially among Germans. If one knew Russian, it was possible between dinner and the closing of the barracks in the cultural barracks to read classics of Russian literature, or at least to learn a little about the world by reading the party newspaper Pravda . Over time, the prisoners also managed to look behind the propaganda texts of Pravda . Occasionally there were cultural evenings with concerts, theater performances or films. Officially, it was possible to write letters to relatives. However, foreigners had to fill out a special form that was never available. Had this been brought up, however, it would have been a criminal defamation of the Soviet Union.

Duties of the inmates

The first prisoners deported to Vorkuta did not find any camp structures in the area, and not even effective tools were available. Until they had built their barracks, they had to live in caves in the earth. After the decision, made in 1939, of the forced development of the area and thus the massive reduction in resources, the prisoners began building a railway line to Kirov . This project succeeded with great losses until 1942. Before the route was completed, the forced laborers were transported across rivers to Vorkuta and the coal returned the same way. To date there is no adequate road connection.

Newcomers to Vorkuta were initially placed in quarantine and only had to do light work, such as peeling potatoes or unloading food. Getting used to the environment and the conditions was the first priority. After the short period of acclimatization, the prisoners had to switch to more physically strenuous work, such as building new barracks or work in which the frozen ground had to be torn up with insufficient tools. Most of the men and women, who were mostly completely exhausted, were no longer able to do this. Other heavy-duty jobs besides excavating the earth included mixing concrete by hand, loading loose cement, unloading coal wagons and clearing snow with just a spade. The most physically difficult work had to do, especially since 1941, by the ever-increasing group of German prisoners of war, which illustrates the increased mortality rate among them. Anyone who was weak and had no one to take over the physically demanding work for at least a moment was insulted, beaten and made a refusal to work, which in turn resulted in detention .

“For the prisoner there was nothing but the eternal mill: eat - sleep - work - sleep - work - day in, day out. There was no Sunday or public holiday, only the establishment of the so-called 'Wychotneu', which means that one could stay in the barrack every seventh shift when the brigade was driven to work. You could then sleep an extra shift. 'Wychotneu' means something like 'exit' - a cynicism. "

- Former prisoner Hans-Dieter Scharf

After Stalin's death

In the summer of 1953 the Vorkuta uprising took place, which lasted around 10 days. Despite the bloody suppression of the strike, the situation for the prisoners steadily improved. After Stalin's death in March 1953, the thaw period followed , a phase of de-Stalinization under Nikita Khrushchev . During this period, the Vorkuta labor camp was finally disbanded.

At the end of 1953 it was possible to write a letter to his relatives; the necessary forms were now available. In addition, there have already been several releases of prisoners who reported the fate of their friends who were still imprisoned in Germany. Since the beginning of 1954, it has also been possible to have parcels delivered by the Red Cross sent to you . This meant a certain increase in the quality of life through z. B. Urgently needed warm clothing. The decision on the release of all German prisoners was made in September 1955, when Chancellor Konrad Adenauer came to Moscow at the invitation of the Soviet Union ( return of the ten thousand ).

The prisoners were not yet free when they were transported from Vorkuta, but the situation had eased significantly for them. Initially, most of them were taken to another camp in East Central Europe via Gorky . Refusals to work were no longer punished and, to the general amazement of the inmates, the Soviet guards even accepted that inmates built a soccer field and took part in sports. There were also games against the security team, whereby the necessary materials for playing football - balls, jerseys, etc. - came from players of 1. FC Kaiserslautern . Together with the guards, the prisoners also listened to a game between the German national soccer team and the Soviet Union in Moscow. All in all, the detainees were just waiting to be released. In which of the two German states they were released, the prisoners even more or less had it in their own hands. In interrogations with officers, some who actually had their home in the GDR gave addresses in West Germany in the hope of being released to the Federal Republic , which actually happened.

Detainees from other nations were also gradually released. For example, on September 19, 1955, the Supreme Soviet issued an amnesty for all citizens of the Soviet Union who had previously been accused of collaborating with Germans. Serious criminals were also released over time. Many of them settled in Vorkuta because they had a job in the mines and a kind of home here. The longest incarcerated group were those convicted of nationalist crimes: They were not released until the labor camp was closed.

Known inmates

Dealing with Vorkuta after the collapse of the Soviet Union

Memorial plaque in Vorkuta (1995)

During the collapse of the Soviet Union , forced labor was also addressed judicially through the law "On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Reprisals", which came into force in October 1991. This law enables former prisoners (or, if the former prisoner has already died, their relatives / friends / fellow prisoners) to apply for rehabilitation and thus to receive official confirmation that they were victims of a repressive system. In particular, the recognition of the injustice suffered was important to the Vorkuta forced laborers, as they are treated differently in terms of pension claims, for example, than former prisoners in German labor camps during the National Socialist dictatorship. Before that there was the feeling of being a victim of “second class”. Those affected emphasized that it was not about financial issues, but about the lack of respect that one shows the victims. The website workuta.de recalls the Vorkuta labor camp and the fate of dozens of prisoners based on their résumés.

The Dutch-Belgian music project Gulaggh , known for recording the screams of psychiatric patients on its phonograms, dedicated an album to the labor camp under the title Vorkuta . In order to authentically simulate the conditions, classical instruments in the style of noise and black metal were played and mixed with the screams of more than 40 women and children.

literature

  • Horst Bienek : Vorkuta. Edited and with an afterword by Michael Krüger. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1230-2 .
  • Roland Bude: Vorkuta. Punishment for political opposition in the Soviet occupation zone / GDR (= series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the records of the State Security Service of the former GDR. Vol. 30). The Berlin State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-934085-32-9 .
  • Peter Erler : Ten years of Soviet military justice in Germany. In: Michael Borchard , Peter Erler, Leonid P. Kopalin: Prisoners of War - Political Prisoners - Rehabilitation (= Future Forum Politics. No. 11, ZDB -ID 2059128-7 ). Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, St. Augustin 2000, pp. 7–22.
  • Annelise Fleck: Vorkuta survived! As a woman in Stalin's prison camp. Bechtermünz, Augsburg 2001, ISBN 3-8289-0417-3 .
  • Jan Foitzik, Horst Hennig (ed.): Encounters in Vorkuta. Memories, certificates, documents. 2nd, revised edition. Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-936522-26-X .
  • Klaus-Peter Graffius, Horst Hennig (Ed.): Between Bautzen and Vorkuta. Totalitarian tyranny and the consequences of imprisonment. 2nd, extended edition, with an evaluation from a Russian historical-legal perspective. Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-937209-76-X .
  • Werner Gumpel : Vorkuta - The city of the living dead. An eyewitness report. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2015, ISBN 978-3-86583-936-7 .
  • Wladislaw Hedeler , Horst Hennig (eds.): Black pyramids, red slaves. The strike in Vorkuta in the summer of 1953. A documented chronicle. Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-86583-177-4 .
  • Martin Hoffmann : … off to Vorkuta! Deported as a student from Mittweida to the Soviet GULag-Vorkuta forced labor camp . Shaker, Aachen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8322-5711-8 .
  • Leonid Pawlowitsch Kopalin: The Rehabilitation of German Victims of Soviet Political Persecution (= History Discussion Group . Issue 10). Research Institute Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung - Historical Research Center, Bonn 1995, ISBN 3-86077-390-9 .
  • Sergej Lochthofen : Black Ice. My father's life novel. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-498-03940-0 .
  • Andreas Petersen : Your snout will freeze over in Siberia. A dictation of the century. Erwin Jöris . Marixverlag, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86539-284-8 .
  • Günther Rehbein: Gulag and comrades. Survivor's Notes. Verlag Neue Literatur, Jena et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-938157-87-9 .
  • Ursula Rumin : In the women's gulag at the Arctic Ocean . Autobiography, preface by Karl Wilhelm Fricke . Herbig, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7766-2414-0 .
  • Hans-Dieter Scharf : From Leipzig to Vorkuta and back. A fate report from the early years of the first German workers 'and peasants' state 1950–1954 (= testimonies to life - ways of suffering. Issue 2). Edited and introduced by Klaus-Dieter Müller . Saxon Memorials Foundation in memory of the victims of political tyranny, Dresden 1996, ISBN 3-9805527-1-3 .
  • Joseph Scholmer : Doctor in Vorkuta. Report from a Soviet prison camp. German paperback publishing house, Munich 1963.
  • Joseph Scholmer: The dead are returning. Report from a doctor from Vorkuta. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne et al. 1954.
  • Horst Schüler : Vorkuta. Memories without fear. Herbig, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7766-1821-3 .

Web links

Commons : Vorkuta labor camp  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b WORKUTA-ITL . Portal MEMORIAL Germany e. V., online at: gulag.memorial.de/
  2. ↑ Vladimír Bystrov: Únosy československých občanů do Sovětského Svazu v letech 1945–1955 . Edition Svědectví , ed. from Úřad dokumentace a vyšetřování zločinů komunismu ÚDV, an institution of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic, Prague 2003, 343 pages, ISBN 80-7312-027-5 , online at: szcpv.org / ... , section Ozerlag, p. 271.
  3. ^ Anne Applebaum : The Gulag. Siedler Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-88680-642-1 , pp. 116–121.
  4. ↑ Oleg Chlevnyuk : The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror . Yale University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-300-09284-9 , pp. 31 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. ↑ Wladislaw Hedeler and Horst Hennig (eds.): Black pyramids, red slaves. The strike in Vorkuta in the summer of 1953. Leipzig 2007, pp. 26–28.
  6. ↑ Hedeler, p. 31.
  7. ↑ Mike Müller-Hellwig: Vorkuta - Symbol of Soviet barbarism and German resistance. In: Jan Foitzik, Horst Hennig (Ed.): Encounters in Vorkuta. Memories, certificates, documents. 2nd, read edition, Leipzig 2003, p. 89.
  8. ↑ Hedeler, p. 40.
  9. ↑ Leonid Pavlovich Kopalin: The rehabilitation of German victims of Soviet political repression. (= Series History Discussion Group, Issue 10), Bonn 1995, p. 15.
  10. ↑ Peter Erler: Ten Years of Soviet Military Jurisdiction in Germany. In: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e. V. (Ed.): Prisoners of War - Political Prisoners - Rehabilitation. (= Zukunftsforum Politik, No. 11), St. Augustin 2000, p. 17f.
  11. ↑ Kopalin, p. 19.
  12. ↑ Hedeler, pp. 35-37.
  13. ^ Heinrich Paul Fritsche: Vorkuta 1953. The terror machine. In: Jan Foitzik, Horst Hennig (Ed.): Encounters in Vorkuta. Memories, certificates, documents. 2nd, read edition, Leipzig 2003, p. 147.
  14. ↑ Hedeler, p. 29.
  15. ^ Roland Bude: Vorkuta. Punishment for political opposition in the Soviet Zone / GDR. (= Series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR, Volume 30), Berlin 2010, p. 56.
  16. ↑ Müller-Hellwig, p. 95.
  17. ↑ Hedeler, p. 36 f.
  18. ↑ Bude, pp. 57-64.
  19. ↑ Bude, pp. 57-59.
  20. ↑ Hedeler, p. 49.
  21. ↑ Bude, p. 72 f.
  22. ↑ Müller-Hellwig, p. 103 f.
  23. ↑ Bude, p. 60.
  24. ↑ Müller-Hellwig, p. 104.
  25. ↑ Bude, pp. 64-66.
  26. ↑ Bude, p. 67 f.
  27. ↑ Müller-Hellwig, p. 80 f.
  28. ↑ Bude, p. 63 f.
  29. ↑ Müller-Hellweg, p. 82.
  30. ↑ Fritsche, p. 130.
  31. ↑ Hans-Dieter Scharf: From Leipzig to Vorkuta and back. A fate report from the early years of the first German workers and peasants state 1950–1954. Dresden 1996, p. 83.
  32. ↑ Bude, p. 69 f.
  33. ↑ Bude, pp. 77-79.
  34. ↑ Hedeler, p. 58.
  35. ↑ Kopalin, p. 9.
  36. ↑ Müller-Hellwig, p. 124.
  37. ↑ workuta.de
  38. ↑ Brandon Stosuy: Show No Mercy. Pitchfork , June 20, 2007, accessed August 12, 2018 .
  39. ↑ Existence is Futile: An Interview with: STALAGGH: /: GULAGGH :. Gnartallica, December 6, 2011, accessed August 12, 2018 .

Coordinates: 67 ° 30 '50.7 "  N , 64 ° 5' 1.7"  E