In 1940, Gustav Herling was arrested after he joined an underground Polish army that fell into Russian hands. He was sent to a northern Russian labour camp, where he spent the two most horrible years of his life. In this book, he tells of the people he was imprisoned with, the hardships they endured, and the indomitable spirit and will that allowed them to survive. Above all, he creates a portrait of how people - deprived of food, clothing, proper medical care, and forced to work at hard labour - can come together to form a community that offers hope in the face of hopelessness, that offers life when even the living have no life left.

A World Apart

GUSTAV HERLING

Biographies & Memoirs

PENGUIN BOOKS LTD, UK

A WORLD APART by GUSTAV HERLING. Contents include: PREFACE , k PART I CHAP. PAGE 1 VITEBSK LENINGRAD VOLOGDA 1 2 HUNTING BY NIGHT 20 3 WORK 1 DAY AFTER DAY 32 2 THROWN TO THE WOLVES 45 3 STALINS MURDERER 50 4 DREI KAMERADEN 56 5 THE ICE-BREAKER 65 6 THE HOUSE OF MEETINGS 86 7 RESURRECTION 97 8 THE DAY OF REST 113 PART II 9 HUNGER 131 10 NIGHTFALL 143 11 THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD 152 12 N THE REAR OF THE WAR FOR THE FATHERLAND 1 A GAME OF CHESS 174 2 HAYMAKING 183 13 MARTYRDOM FOR THE FAITH 190 14 THE MORTUARY 210 15 IN THE URALS, 1942 227 EPILOGUE THE FALL OF PARIS 242 APPENDIX 249 ILLUSTRATIONS THE AUTHORS PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN GRODNO PRISON IN 1940, AND STOLEN BY HIM FROM HIS DOSSIER ON THE DAY OF HIS RELEASE FROM KARGOPOL CAMP frontispiece A PHOTOGRAPH OF ONE OF THE CAMP-SECTIONS OF THE KARGOPOL CAMP, TAKEN ORIGINALLY BY A CAMP GUARD AS A SOUVENIR, AND LATER SOLD BY HIM TO ONE OF THE PRISONERS facing page 24 A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE HANDKERCHIEF MADE AND EMBROI DERED BY Miss Z. facing page 220 IGANOVS POSTCARD facing page 228 AN EXTRACT FROM THE AUTHORS DIARY, KEPT AFTER HIS RELEASE FROM THE CAMP facing page 234.   PREFACE by BERTRAND RUSSELL:  OF the many books that I have read relating the experiences of victims in Soviet prisons and labour camps, Mr. Gustav Herlings A World Apart is the most impressive and the best written. He possesses in a very rare degree the power of simple and vivid description, and it is quite impossible to question his sincerity at any point. In the years 1940-42 he was first in prison and then in a forced labour camp near Archangel. The bulk of the book relates what he saw and suffered in the camp. The book ends with letters from eminent Communists saying that no such camps exist. Those who write these letters and those fellow-travellers who allow themselves to believe them share responsibility for the almost unbelievable horrors which are being inflicted upon millions of wretched men and women, slowly done to death by hard labour and starvation in the Arctic cold. Fellow-travellers who refuse to believe the evidence of books such as Mr. Herlings are necessarily people devoid of humanity, for if they had any humanity they would not merely dismiss the evidence, but would take some trouble to look into it. Communists and Nazis alike have tragically demonstrated that in a large proportion of mankind the impulse to inflict torture exists, and requires only opportunity to display itself in all its naked horror. But I do not think that these evils can be cured by blind hatred of their perpetrators. This will only lead us to become like them. Although the effort is not easy, one should attempt, in reading such a book as this one, to understand the circumstances that turn men into fiends, and to realise that it is not by blind rage that such evils will be prevented. I do not say that to understand is to pardon there are things which for my part I find I cannot pardon. But I do say that to understand is absolutely necessary if the spread of similar evils over the whole world is to be prevented. I hope that Mr...

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Oxford University Press

Leaders & Notable People

Roy Publishers

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