Book description
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...
