A Gulag Mothers Story.

[ralucagymnast]

Unbearably sad;

HAVA VOLOVICH was a newspaper sub-editor who was arrested in 1937, aged 21, for being publicly critical of the damage done to Ukrainian peasants by the new collective system, which grouped together dozens of farms to make one giant super-farm. She remained in the Gulag for 16 years, where she became one of the tens of thousands of young prisoners to become pregnant and have a baby. Prison nurseries did exist, but malnutrition, restrictive breast-feeding schedules and astonishing cruelty often resulted in the child suffering an early death.

A number of men offered their ‘services’ — and I did not choose the best by any means. But the result of my choice was an angelic little girl with golden curls. I called her Eleanor.

There were three mothers in our barracks and we were given a tiny little room of our own. By night, we brushed from our babies the bedbugs that fell from the ceiling like sand. By day, we left them with any old woman who had been let off work, knowing these women would calmly help themselves to the food we left for the children.
No escape: Women and children work at a gulag in 1932. Prison nurseries did exist, but malnutrition, restrictive breast-feeding schedules and astonishing cruelty often resulted in the child suffering an early death

No escape: Women and children work at a gulag in 1932. Prison nurseries did exist, but malnutrition, restrictive breast-feeding schedules and astonishing cruelty often resulted in the child suffering an early death

Every night for a year, I stood at my child’s cot, picking off the bedbugs and praying, begging God to prolong my torment by 100 years if it meant I wouldn’t be parted from my daughter.

But God did not answer my prayer. Eleanor had barely started walking and had just uttered her first, heart-warming word — ‘Mama’ — when we were dressed in rags, despite the winter’s chill, bundled into a freight car and transferred to the ‘mother’s camp’.

Here, I was expected to work in the forest, felling trees as normal during the day — while my pudgy little angel with the golden curls, back at the camp’s infant shelter, soon turned into a pale ghost with blue shadows under her eyes and sores all over her lips.

I caught a chill on the bladder, terrible lumbago and shaved my hair off to avoid getting lice. My appearance could not have been more miserable and wretched. But in return for bribes of firewood, the guards let me see my daughter outside normal hours. But the things I saw!

I saw nurses shoving and kicking children out of bed before washing them in ice-cold water. I saw a nurse grab the nearest baby, tie back its arms and then cram spoonful after spoonful of hot porridge down its throat.

My little Eleanor began to fade faster. ‘Mama, want home,’ she cried one evening, her little body covered with mysterious bruises.

On the last day of her life, when I picked her up to breast-feed her, she stared wide-eyed into the distance, clawing and biting at my breast, begging to be put down.

In the evening, when I came back with my little bundle of firewood, her cot was empty. I found her lying naked in the morgue among the corpses of the adult prisoners. She had spent one year and four months in this world and died on March 3, 1944.

Source here; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...read-die-.html


This stuff should be compulsory teaching in school history lessons.

[ralucagymnast]

One of the saddest parts is that Eleonora was the only child that this woman would ever have.

[ralucagymnast]

Originally Posted by ralucagymnast

Unbearably sad;



Source here; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...read-die-.html


This stuff should be compulsory teaching in school history lessons.

Thanks Chris for adding the photo Respect to you, man.

[rapeWhistle]

Put's one's day-to-day annoyances into perspective...

[ralucagymnast]

Originally Posted by rapeWhistle

Put's one's day-to-day annoyances into perspective...

Doesnt it just As a parent this really got to me

[imi]

Gulag = Concentration camp without racial selection and gas chambers
Stalin put in grave 30 million people under his controll

[ralucagymnast]

Originally Posted by imi

Gulag = Concentration camp without racial selection and gas chambers
Stalin put in grave 30 million people under his controll

Indeed; some information which I pinched from Wiki about the actual word "Gulag":
"GULAG" was the acronym for Гла́вное управле́ние лагере́й (Glavnoye upravleniye lagerey), the "Main Camp Administration". It was the short form of the official name Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й и коло́ний (Glavnoye upravleniye ispravityelno-trudovykh lagerey i koloniy), the "Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Labor Settlements".

Dreadful, dark period in Russian history. But remarkable that through this enslavement they were able to achieve in 30 years what would have taken the West 150-200 years to achieve. But what a price to pay I read an eyewitness account where, during the construction of the Volga-Moscow canal, that there was a huge leak, and the river threatened to burst through the dam, so to plug the hole, workers were pushed into the hole with their wheelbarrows, just to plug the hole and stop it leaking Mind boggling isnt it? All of the locks along the canal are burial sites for God knows how many poor souls

[dirty ike]

True hell on earth.

[GregK]

I couldnt imagine seeing your child like this and being helpless.

[ralucagymnast]

Originally Posted by GregK

I couldnt imagine seeing your child like this and being helpless.

I know
Do you have kids GK? Its even more heartbreaking when youre a parent yourself. It really is devastatingly sad, breaks my heart.