The Gulag Doctors

 

The Gulag Doctors: Life, Death, and Medicine in Stalin's Labour Camps is a brilliantly researched book by Dan Healey. Because of the disturbing content, this book is a difficult read. Based on interviews conducted with those who lived this fate or their relatives. Between 1930 and 1953, approximately 18,000,000 people were housed in these Russian Labor Camps. This would be referred to as the Purge of 1936 by Stalin. A person who publicly disagreed or was considered a threat would either be executed or sent to a Gulag camp. Innocence was irrelevant.

In the camp system, both free and imprisoned medical workers were forced to work. Prisoners without medical training became apprentices and learned about medicine during their imprisonment.

This is utterly incomprehensible, "The Gulag made some prisoners so desperate to be ill that they literally became mentally ill." There was no compassion for human life. Once, prisoners arrived at the camp dead and frozen solid. "A transport of prisoners arrived with many dead, and he notes how their frozen remains made a grim impression..."

Some prisoners were employed in the mining industry, logging, and oil and gas extraction. Furthermore, they were exposed to radiation, which eventually led to heart problems, cancer, and infections. For furthering medicine, many prisoners were experimented on.

I have just given you a very brief overview of the book. The author did an excellent job gathering the information for this book, as I mentioned earlier. This is a book I would recommend.