I remember, though, that I had just begun to eat my evening ration. The whole sight so sickened me I couldn’t finish it; I almost vomited up what I’d already eaten. Everyone else, however, calmly went back about his business, wolfed down the evening’s ration, then turned to the evening’s session of talk or card games. These men were hard and cruel, and the only law they observed was their own. Even the guards were afraid of them, or at least avoided “incidents” with them whenever possible.
With the camp nearly completed, strip mining was begun. The clay under the topsoil here was of a type called evrolit, used especially in making fire brick. It was the first time it had been found in this part of the country, so the clay taken from our strip mines was sent as far as Krasnoyarsk. The camp itself became known as “Evrolitna.” Since the ground was frozen, we would dynamite away the topsoil, then dig for the clay. After three months, there was so much demand for the clay that this process of strip mining was judged to be too slow. A big pit was blasted, and a horizontal shaft was begun at the level of the clay below the topsoil. I was back to mining.
Shortly afterward, though, I was rescued from the mines by another political prisoner named Gribunov. A former colonel in the Red Army, he was a serious, taciturn man who had few friends among the prisoners and kept strictly to himself. He never allowed himself to use slang or deviate in any way from his own standards of an officer and gentleman. He was also an ardent Communist; in fact, he said he had known Stalin personally. Consequently, he was extremely bitter about the fact that he had devoted all his talents to the service of his country and still wound up in the prison camps—because of treachery within the Party, he said.
Gribunov admired the American Army, and when he heard I was an American, he looked me up. Somehow, he managed to get me assigned to work with him at the sawmill. Camp construction was completed, but now we turned out props and supports for the mine shaft. One day, just after we had finished cutting up a log and had gone outside to fetch another, we heard the saw start up, then whine as it bit into something. We ran in to find a young fellow, one of the thieves, holding the stump of his arm. Blood was spurting everywhere, but he said quite nonchalantly, “Tie it off.” We immediately threw a tourniquet about it and bandaged it as best we could. Then the fellow walked calmly to the infirmary to get it treated.
Gribunov and I were nearly put into the bur, though, because we had left the saw unattended and given the thief the “opportunity” to cut off his arm. Such mutilations, in order to get out of work, were quite common. Men would put their hand up against a building and whack off their fingers with one blow of an axe, almost as casually as if they were playing some sort of game. They’d make no sound, no fuss, just like the young thief at the sawmill, but simply bind up the stumps tight and go off to the doctor. Accordingly, tools were given out only to “responsible” people. It was just too bad for you if an “accident” happened with the tool you had been assigned.
There were other ways, however, less violent but just as drastic, for the thieves to get out of work. For instance, they would grind a lump of sugar into powder and inhale it like snuff. Within a week, their lungs would be badly inflamed and they would be coughing up blood as if they had TB. So, after a while, sugar was served only in the kasha, already melted; it was no longer given out in lumps.
CONSTRUCTION LABORER IN NORILSK
ONE MORNING IN June 1947, I was told before work to remain in the barrack when the brigade left. I was startled. About ten o’clock, a guard came to the barrack and asked to see my register card. When I produced it, he immediately checked through my clothes to see that nothing was missing; we had just turned in our winter clothes and been given the summer issue of cotton pants, jacket, and cap. When he finished, he told me to pack up my things and come along.
I walked with the guard out the main gates of Evrolitna and managed to wig-wag to Gribunov as I went by. I never saw him again. We walked along the railroad tracks skirting the slope of the hill, down into Norilsk itself, to another camp called simply “Camp 2.” Some of the prison camps around the Norilsk area had names, like “Zapadnaya” and “Evrolitna”; most of them, however, were just numbered. Once inside the camp gate, the guard turned me over to the authorities. I went through the usual routine of registration, then made a welcome trip to the bathhouse and barber. Finally, I was appointed to a brigade and assigned to a barrack.
Camp 2 was quite large. There may have been as many as fifty or sixty barracks altogether, built in rows along a series of regular streets and neatly kept, for the camp was practically in the city of Norilsk itself. The barracks were one-story buildings set on the rising ground at the foot of Schmidtika, so there was a set of wooden steps on the front of the barracks which made them look almost like homes. They had also been freshly whitewashed. Here in Camp 2, each barrack was divided down the middle by a corridor, with two sections of bunk rooms on either side. The corridors housed the washstands, as well as clothes racks and hangers.
The bunks along both walls were double-deckers, as usual, but there was a passage between every two bunks, unlike the solid rows I had seen before. On these bunks, for the first time in the camps, I saw thin mattresses and blankets. In the middle of the room was a small brick stove with a large chimney to hold the heat; behind the stove was a long table with benches. In one corner was a barrel of water for washing, as well as a tin kettle of drinking water. There was an orderly assigned to each section, whose job it was to have food on the table at the proper times, clean the room, and look after the clothing and the blankets.
Every morning, too, the orderly brought in the valenki from the drying shed in the center of camp where they were hung each evening. They were identified by number—my number here was zero-one-one-one—written in chalk on the valenki before they were hung by metal rings to dry. The chalk, however, was easily erased, so everyone added his own peculiar identifying mark to his pair in order to prevent switching. With blankets on the beds, it was no longer necessary to sleep in our work clothes, so we also hung them up to dry each night. The numbers were painted on them.
Camp 2 was also the first camp I’d been in where strict attention was paid to the cleanliness of the barracks and the men. Bath day was held once every ten days, at which time we got our hair clipped with a machine, our body shaved (as a precaution against lice), and were handed a dollar-sized piece of soap. Before we entered the bathhouse, we stripped and turned in our clothes; they were taken to be disinfected. When we came out of the bathhouse, we stood in line for fresh linen. You put on whatever you got, whether it was too big or too small; if it was too tight, you ripped it up to make it comfortable. By the next bath day, you might turn in underwear which was not much more than rags. Here, too, for the first time, they washed our wadded pants and jackets—once every three months.
The main project at Camp 2 was the construction of a huge ore processing plant called BOF. My first evening in camp, a commission came around the barracks to question each new worker on his specialty. In my brigade was a young fellow named Mikhail, twenty years old at most, with whom I had become friendly. He knew the ropes, so he told me to classify myself as a “mechanic.” There was another fellow in the brigade, a Jew named Vanya, who also signed up as a mechanic. By bedtime that night, we were all three assigned together as a technical crew—and none of us knew the first thing about machinery.
The next day we reported to work at the factory. It was only about 100 yards from the gates of the camp to the gates of the factory area, so we were simply counted in and out, without guards, almost like punching a time clock. That morning, we three “mechanics” reported to the metal-working section. We soon discovered we were supposed to sketch out sheets of metal, sections of boilers and so forth, for welding. The foreman of the crew, a Jew named Stein, began to explain things to me. I just nodded my head at Vanya and said, “Talk to him. I’m only his helper.”
Stein explained quite rapidly what he expected us to do, then gave us a simple sk
etch with which to begin. Vanya nodded professionally, holding his finger to his forehead and looking thoughtful, occasionally rubbing his chin with his fist. After Stein left, we hauled out our first sheet of iron and went into a huddle. We hadn’t the vaguest idea how to begin or what tools to use. After a while, Stein came back. He must have seen by this time that we were bluffing, but he said nothing. Finally, Vanya took the bull by the horns and drew his first sketch—freehand, sort of estimating things with his eye. Then, with all the assurance of a master mechanic, he called the welder over and told him to cut it out with his torch. It didn’t come close to fitting specifications, of course. “Well,” said Vanya, “even the experts make mistakes!”
Luckily, I soon got acquainted with a German cutter who was indeed an expert. He told us, step by step, what to do; gradually, our work became acceptable. It was a good thing, too, because it kept us off the wheelbarrow crews outside. The work was being pushed ahead fast, in hopes the buildings could at least be roofed over before the winter set in. Walls were being thrown up so hurriedly that even we “mechanical experts” had to help out from time to time on the wheelbarrows. By late summer, it was already cold enough to freeze the water in the mortar, but bricks were laid anyway. The officials claimed they had a new process for mixing the mortar and laying bricks in cold weather. It was a new process all right; after the mortar set—“froze” would be a better word—it was so loose we could scrape it out from between the bricks with our fingers.
The tempo, the weather, and the mortar combined to produce a real tragedy. A side wall of one of the factory buildings, more than two-thirds completed, collapsed without warning and buried those who were working on it. I never knew how many had been killed, because all the brigades were sent back to camp immediately, even before the rescue work had begun. The next morning, most of the construction brigades, including my own, were sent to Camp 9 on the other side of the city. But new brigades were brought in, the wall went back up, and the factory took shape.
Camp 9 was also a good camp, like Camp 2. The barracks were clean and warm, and again we had mattresses and blankets on the beds. The camp, built near a large clay quarry, was designed to provide Norilsk with the necessary building materials for all the new construction. There was a brick factory next to the camp, as well as smaller factories for producing concrete blocks, pre-cast window frames, and glass binders for special-purpose materials. We worked in the brick factory around the clock in three shifts. There was scarcely any machinery, the mixers were primitive, and even the cutting of bricks was done by hand. The factory itself was divided into two sections: a smaller room where the clay was mixed and the bricks cut, and a large room with three kilns for firing the bricks. I was put to work in the kiln room.
The officials were everywhere, urging us to work faster, to step up the pace. Since this factory was the major source of building supplies for all the construction in and around Norilsk, the Camp 9 officials were desperate to keep up with the demand. They urged, they threatened, they promised—but for the most part they got nowhere. The prisoners in Camp 9 were predominantly thieves, and they did as little work as possible.
Finally, early in 1948, the camp title was changed to “Camp 5.” The thieves were sent off to another camp, and large groups of political prisoners were brought to our camp in order to get the work done. With the reorganization of the camp, I was assigned to a construction brigade engaged in the actual building of the city of Norilsk. Brigades from Camp 2 had been working on the city in an area known as “Gor Stroi”; now we joined them from Camp 5. The buildings had originally been mostly two-story affairs, much like prison barracks, but by 1948 we were building four- and five-story apartment buildings.
The first stage was always to clear the site of the new building, and put up barbed wire around the work area. Then we dug the foundation. For these five-story buildings, we had to go all the way down to bedrock—18 to 26 yards straight down through the permafrost and it was all done by pick and shovel. The foundations weren’t continuous, though, but simply pylons, 2 meters square, set on the bedrock to serve as bases for the reinforced concrete pillars which were the central supports of the whole building.
Three men worked on a pylon hole. We had to use buckets to take out the dirt, so one man worked above ground and two below—one to dig and one to load the buckets. We worked ten hours straight, with a half hour out for dinner. Although it was 40° below zero above ground, down in the hole we would have to work so furiously to meet our daily quota that we’d strip to the waist to stay comfortable. As soon as a hole hit bedrock, and the pylon was ready, the concrete was poured immediately. It might take a day or two to fill the hole, since the concrete also had to be mixed by hand and the weather was anything but ideal for the job.
Once the foundation holes were finished, the walls would be begun around these reinforced pillars. Again, all the work was done by manual labor. Bricks, cement, lumber, everything was carried up ladders or hoisted up five stories by hand. Yet despite these primitive conditions, five-story apartment buildings were finished in the dead of winter in less than three months.
Of course, there was a lot of waste. Sometimes half a carload of bricks would be broken in unloading, or a half carload of cement would be blown away by the wind while we shoveled it. The prisoners, naturally, never bothered about it. In fact, they might chop up a beam designed to support a ceiling and use it as firewood, just to keep warm in the building. All that mattered was whether or not the building was finished on schedule, or the quota of work for the day was done and passed inspection.
The work was hard and the hours were long, but life in Camp 5 was better than I had known it in a long time. The political prisoners here were an interesting lot, friendly, easy to talk to, with a good spirit of camaraderie. As we collected at the gates each night to return home, there was always a lot of joshing and fooling around. On the way back to the camp, we had to pass through the center of Norilsk. The people glanced at us with sympathy and, though we couldn’t stop and talk to them, you could see the brigade straighten their backs and walk a little taller as they marched down the streets of the city.
At Camp 5, too, I said Mass again for the first time since Dudinka. Again, Father Casper was my “angel.” He had come here straight from Dudinka, and was already saying Mass daily for a large group of Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, and other Catholics. He looked me up the first night I arrived to ask me to help. I was overjoyed, and soon took over one of his “parishes.”
A Pole named Victor was the organizer of my “parish.” A man of medium height, quite bald, with coal-black eyes and pale face, Victor had once been a teacher. Now he was camp bookbinder, and his office was in the headquarters building. As a matter of fact, I used to say Mass in his office. Right under the commandant’s nose, as it were, I said the whole Oriental-rite Mass every evening, with rare exceptions. I had a little chalice and paten which one of the prisoners made for me out of nickel; the wine again was raisin wine, and the bread was baked especially by some Latvian Catholics who worked in the camp kitchen.
Victor himself attended Mass and went to Communion every evening. There was also a Russian named Smirnov who came often. He knew the Mass prayers by heart, and answered them on behalf of the congregation. It was dangerous to have too many people in the office for fear of drawing attention to ourselves, but as word began to spread, more and more men wanted to attend Mass. After a while, Casper and I began to take chances. We would say Mass in one of the barracks where the men were mostly Lithuanians or Poles and the brigadier himself was a religious man.
Eventually, someone must have informed on me. I was taken off my job with the foundation crew and put into another brigade in a barrack on the other side of camp, under a strict brigadier who was told to watch me closely. He knew practically nothing about religion, however, and hadn’t been specifically warned that religious activities were what he was to watch for. So the men would come into the barrack at night to play a game of cards
or dominoes and, under the general hubbub of chatter and conversation, tell me how many confessions and communions were arranged for that night or the next morning.
Afterward, I would go out for a walk. Strolling around the camp, I’d meet one man, then another, hearing his confession as we walked and talked. If there were a lot of confessions or communions, I would try to have the men get up early in the morning and go to various points around the camp. I’d meet them there, ostensibly by chance, in groups of two or three and, under the guise of a morning greeting, distribute Communion. Otherwise, I tried to get all the communions distributed after Mass at night; it was risky to keep the Blessed Sacrament overnight for fear of a barracks raid. Not that the guards would be looking for the Blessed Sacrament precisely, but in a raid of that sort they confiscated everything and I didn’t like to take chances.
The officials sometimes questioned me, and once they warned me outright not to engage in any religious work. I knew they were having me watched. Victor, however, kept his ears open for any conversation in the office next to his bookbinding shop concerning me. If he heard my name mentioned, he would try to catch a glimpse through the boards of the man who was reporting on me or watching me.
After a while, though, we moved our Mass location from barrack to barrack in order to avoid suspicion. I would say Mass in a corner of a barrack where the orderly was friendly, while he guarded the door to keep out anyone who didn’t live there or who he thought didn’t belong to the group. We delivered sermons and exhortations walking up and down in a group in the yard, just like any group of prisoners engaged in a discussion or a bull session. Sometimes I’d hear confessions, if there were just a few, right in the barrack over a game of dominoes or while pretending to read a pamphlet on Communism. Quite a few of the men began to make a regular monthly confession, and there were even a number of weekly ones. All in all, we had a thriving parish.
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