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| Europe | |
| Gulag Survivor Wages Battle Against Oblivion | |
| 2003-09-14 | |
| Very long but worth it, hit the link for the whole story. KHOLODNY, Russia — In the dying settlement called simply by the Russian word for "Cold," there is one woman left who remembers. Nina Ivanovna Romanova is the last one here who survived Stalin-era camps where millions of slave laborers extracted the riches of the Russian Far North. She is the last one to have panned gold by hand, side by side with female political prisoners who died off in the unbearable winter frost. She is the last to have known what it is to have her father arrested, her son taken away and her own life changed irrevocably because one day in 1946 she sold a dress for food. For that, Soviet authorities branded her a "speculator" and sent her to the camps. She stayed on in the region when the camps closed in the 1950s, as many former prisoners did, and now she refuses Russian government directives to move to warmer areas to the south. "Someone must stay to remember," she said, a gentle 80-year-old with piercing blue eyes and a one-room apartment. This settlement "needs to be preserved." We in the west frequently forget how lucky we are.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 And others badanov. Stories like this need to be nailed into the heads of Stalinist apologists. That whole system was evil, almost beyond comprehension and yet we still have the 'useful idiots' around us all today. Thing is, due to the Internet, the truth really is out there - if people care enough to look. I was slightly left-leaning (it's almost inevitable in the UK - the culture is very different to the US). However, I certainly knew that communism was not a system I wanted to have anything to do with. Fortunately, due to the Cold War, I never had to (and I realise I do owe a debt to the US). I'd started changing (awakening?) a long time before 9/11. It's just on that day, everything was crystalised for me and I knew that we were at war. I've learnt so much about the current situation from the Blogosphere, particularly Rantburg, LGF, Lileks, Samizdata and the others. Talk about having the blinkers removed! So Nina, you stay in 'Cold' - someone needs to remember, we sure do. |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2003-9-14 12:10:28 PM |
| #1 Bless her heart. Someone should tell her we (the USA) won't let the world forget. |
| Posted by: badanov 2003-9-14 9:13:59 AM |