Russia and the Jews

Stalin’s ‘Work to Death’ Camps
Make no mistake about the gulags: they were not “work forever” camps. They were “work
to death” camps, designed to liquidate the occupants. Millions were sent to die in them.
At left, top to bottom: 1.) Workers labor by hand in sub-zero temperatures somewhere
in the gulag. Life for many was short in the camps. 2.) A man wields a sledge hammer
as another holds a spike as a crew works on a railroad bridge. 3.) A long line of workers
is shown stretching almost to the horizon. They are working laying railroad tracks through
a particularly remote area of Russia. Above, inmates worked in bitter conditions. Here a
man pushes a wheelbarrow laden with rocks through a dense ice fog.
murdered or deported between 300,000 and 500,000 victims.”
79
This number includes those massacred by the Bolsheviks
during the overwhelming of the White Army of General
Wrangel on the Crimea around the end of October
1920. By the end of December, just in this one region the
Bolsheviks murdered approximately 50,000 civilians. 80
The number Solzhenitsyn specifies of 120,000 to
150,000 total victims, including those of the “de-Cossackization”
of the Don, Caucasus and Kuban areas, signifies
only those human beings actually killed. 81
But what is not considered in arriving at these numbers
are conditions—such as starvation, cold and disease—
caused by the Bolsheviks during the civil war, which themselves
caused the death, according to Stuart Kahan, the
Jewish nephew of Lazar Kaganovich, of approximately 9
million human beings. 82
As a consequence of the Bolshevik agricultural policy
and the resulting civil war, in particular in the Volga area,
central Russia and Siberia, about 5 million humans succumbed
to a horrific food crisis in 1921 and 1922. 83 Of the
30 million human beings in the hunger area, many were
saved only by foreign assistance.
Just in the few days between August 29 and September
5, 1924, the Cheka shot 12,578 human beings. 84 There is
no record of any Jews having been shot.
In place of a still-lacking total figure for Cheka murders
in connection with the “de-kulakization campaign,” itself
a part of the obligatory collectivization phase of
1927-1930, there exists a confidential GPU report of Feb.
15, 1930 sent to the people’s commissar of the interior at
that time, GenrikhYagoda. By discussing the execution of
his Order No. 44/21, it reveals to us the language used at
the time and the methods of Bolshevik state terror. The report
proudly states:
As for the liquidations—both individuals taken out of
circulation and mass operations—we arrive at a total figure
of 64,589. In the preparatory measures, there were 52,166
liquidations (those of individuals), and 12,423 through
mass operations. In just a few days our “production quota”
was exceeded, i.e., 60,000 kulaks of the first category.
Solzhenitsyn says they were targeted for “counterrev-
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