Journey into the land of the Zeks and back: a memoir of the Gulag

Book Cover
Average Rating
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Publication Date
©2020.
Language
English

Description

Under the Soviet regime, millions of zeks (prisoners) were incarcerated in the forced labor camps, the Gulag. There many died of starvation, disease, and exhaustion, and some were killed by criminals and camp guards. In 1939, as the Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland, many Polish citizens found themselves swept up by the Soviet occupation and sent into the Gulag. One such victim was Julius Margolin, a Pinsk-born Jewish philosopher and writer living in Palestine who was in Poland on family matters.Margolin's Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back offers a powerful, first-person account of one of the most shocking chapters of the violent twentieth century. Opening with the outbreak of World War II in Poland, Margolin relates its devastating impact on the Jews and his arrest and imprisonment in the Gulag system. During his incarceration from 1940 to 1945, he nearly died from starvation and overwork but was able to return to Western Europe and rejoin his family in Palestine. With a philosopher's astute analysis of man and society, as well as with humor, his memoir of flight, entrapment, and survival details the choices and dilemmas faced by an individual under extreme duress. Margolin's moving account illuminates universal issues of human rights under a totalitarian regime and ultimately the triumph of human dignity and decency.This translation by Stefani Hoffman is the first English-language edition of this classic work, originally written in Russian in 1947 and published in an abridged French version in 1949. Circulated in a Russian samizdat version in the USSR, it exerted considerable influence on the formation of the genre of Gulag memoirs and was eagerly read by Soviet dissidents. Timothy Snyder's foreword and Katherine Jolluck's introduction contextualize the creation of this remarkable account of a Jewish world ravaged in the Stalinist empire--and the life of the man who was determined to reveal the horrors of the gulag camps and the plight of the zeks to the world.

More Details

Contributors
Hoffman, Stefani translator
Jolluck, Katherine R. writer of introduction
Margolin, I︠U︡liĭ,1900-1971
Snyder, Timothy writer of foreword
ISBN
9780197502143

Table of Contents

From the Book

Journey into the land of the Zeks and back
The road to the West.

Discover More

Author Notes

Loading Author Notes...

Similar Titles From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These books have the appeal factors well-researched, and they have the genre "history writing -- europe -- russia"; and the subjects "political persecution," "communism," and "communism and society."
These books have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "concentration camps."
These books have the appeal factors richly detailed and well-researched, and they have the subjects "concentration camps," "communism," and "communism and society."
These books have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "concentration camps."
The day will pass away: the diary of a gulag prison guard, 1935-1936 - Chistyakov, Ivan
These books have the genre "translations -- russian to english"; and the subjects "concentration camps," "convict labor," and "communism."
These books have the subjects "concentration camps," "convict labor," and "communism."
These moving, thought-provoking memoirs of surviving Auschwitz (Cold Crematorium) and the Soviet Gulag (Journey) were first published in Hungarian and Russian, respectively, by 1950. They finally receive English translations in these editions and reach a new generation of readers. -- Michael Shumate
These books have the appeal factors haunting, and they have the genres "translations -- polish to english" and "history writing -- europe -- eastern europe"; and the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "communism."
These books have the genres "translations -- russian to english" and "history writing -- europe -- eastern europe"; and the subjects "political persecution," "communism," and "communism and society."
These books have the genres "life stories -- facing adversity -- war and oppression" and "life stories -- politics -- political prisoners"; and the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "communism."
These books have the genres "translations -- german to english" and "history writing -- europe -- russia"; and the subjects "political persecution," "communism," and "communism and society."
These books have the appeal factors spare, and they have the genre "translations -- russian to english"; and the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "concentration camps."

Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "concentration camps."
These authors' works have the subjects "political persecution," "concentration camps," and "communism."
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "concentration camps."
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "penal colonies."
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "concentration camps."
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "communism."
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "concentration camps."
These authors' works have the subjects "concentration camps," "convict labor," and "communism."
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "communism."
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "concentration camps."
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "communism and society," and "soviet union history."
These authors' works have the subjects "political prisoners," "political persecution," and "communism."

Published Reviews

Kirkus Book Review

The first English translation of the author's gulag memoir, composed in Russian in 1947 and first published in France in 1949. Published long before Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago (1973), Margolin's fierce exposé was largely ignored after the war. In this new version--featuring maps and glossary, a foreword by Timothy Snyder, and a helpfully contextual introduction by Katherine R. Jolluck, translator Hoffman does a brilliant job rendering Margolin's sardonic flourishes in his presentation of the senseless cruelty of the Soviet gulag system. Born in Pinsk in 1900, then in Russia's tumultuous Pale of Settlement, Margolin--a Jew who was trying to return to Palestine, where his family had moved by the time of the invasion of Poland in 1939--was ultimately caught up in the terrible nationalistic dilemma of accepting a Soviet passport or returning to Nazi-occupied Poland. Ironically, those who did return perished in the concentration camps. Margolin was arrested and endured five years in the Soviet prison system. He was taken by "coffin" train to the far northwest, on the northern tip of Lake Onega, where Stalin had established a camp to provide the labor to construct the Baltic--White Sea Canal. With the Nazi invasion, the inmates were moved by foot, walking 12 hours per day to the Kargopol camp, 300 miles east. Via the meticulous day-to-day chronicling of the horrendous conditions and labor, spiritless terrain, meager rations, foul conditions, and sadistic behavior by the hardened, predatory criminals with whom he traveled and worked, Margolin sketches the thoroughly dehumanizing system of Sovietization. "I was never enchanted by the Soviet regime," he writes, "and I never doubted that its theory was unsustainable and its practice full of cruel human fraud." Attempting to reveal the truth about the camps, Margolin was met by "a stone wall of indifference and treachery." The final section, "Road to the West," delineates his arduous, miraculous return to freedom. Beautifully written, incredibly detailed and moving--an important historical document. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Powered by Syndetics

Reviews from GoodReads

Loading GoodReads Reviews.

Staff View

Loading Staff View.