trb@drux3.UUCP (12/31/83)
If anyone should have any doubt that citizens in the USSR live in fear
and are imprisoned for moral and religious beliefs, may I suggest you
read "The First Guidebook To Prisons And Concentration Camps Of The
Soviet Union" by Avraham Shifrin (Bantam Books, 1982).
A former prisoner of several USSR camps, Mr. Shifrin, whom I saw as he
spoke in Denver recently, documents over 2000 labor camps, prisons,
and psychiatric camps. This information comes from an intricate
network of inmates, Soviet citizens, and former prisoners; this
information was obtained by people willing to risk their lives to tell
the story.
In the book he has maps, photographs, and names of prisoners and their
"crimes." Many of these people, wanting nothing more than to leave
the Socialist paradise, were sent to camps and charged with
"misjudgement of reality."
And what are these prisons like? From the book:
Some prisoners have been driven to the point where they
tattoo slogans on their foreheads: "Death to Communism!"
"Down with the Soviet regime!" Previously, these tattoos
were cut out of their flesh, without any anesthesia. Now
such offenders are tried in secret and shot.
Mr. Shifrin also documents conclusively the extent of Soviet slave
labor. All uranium mining is done by slave labor, the oil pipeline
under construction from the USSR to West Germany is being done by
slave labor, many of the goods from the Soviet Union sold in this
country are made by slave labor.
This 390 page book is extremely well documented and written, and I
would encourage all who have an interest in this subject to read it.
If you can't find it, a bookstore here in Denver has about 2 dozen
copies, last I was in there.
Tom Buckley