Soviet “Gulag” vs. German “Jewish Concentration Camp”, Research Paper Example

Both, the Soviet Gulag and the German concentration camps, were used to get rid of people for political, social, and racial reasons. The life of the inmates was often miserable, inhumane, and in most cases ended up with death. While it is true that the Soviet Union played a vital role in crushing the German oppression during the Second World War, its political methodology was just as cruel as that of the Nazi. Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” greatly illustrates the authoritative tyranny and camp survival of the Gulag prisoners.

Soviet Gulag

Gulag used to be a gigantic Soviet system of enforced labor camps. Throughout its dark history nearly 18 million were forwarded the camps and prisons of this camp. Under the rule of Stalin, labor camp prisoners turned into a significant source for the building of many industries, involving the construction of the nation’s roads and railways, mining processes, and the timber manufacturing. Millions of people guilty of no crime suffered in the camps. In the eyes of the authorities, a prisoner was not worth anything. The example of Ivan Denisovich depicts the harsh conditions of the everyday life of a prisoner. People are punished with days to be spent in the cold, rotten cells for no particular reason. Still an indefinite number, probably well into the millions perished in Gulag camps. Those prisoners who died of starvation, harsh weather conditions, and hard physical labor were replaced by new prisoners without difficulty. “Concentration camps were created in the Soviet Union shortly after the 1917 revolution, but the system grew to tremendous proportions during the course of Stalin’s campaign to turn the Soviet Union into a modern industrial power and to collectivize agriculture in the early 1930s” (Stalin’s Gulag). Gulag camps were present all over the Soviet Union, but the major camps were positioned in the most severe climatic and geographical areas of the country from the Arctic to Siberia and Central Asia. Gulag’s prisoners were occupied with a range of activities. Nevertheless, in general their labor was amateurish, physical, and economically ineffective. The mixture of widespread violence, severe climate, inhumane labor, food scarcity and unhealthy conditions resulted into tremendously high death rates in Gulag. In Solzhenitsyn’s work, prisoners were checked for extra underwear clothing.

“Gulag prisoners could work up to 14 hours per day” (Work in the Gulag). Distinctive labor in the Gulag was wearing physical effort. Working in sometimes the most severe weather, prisoners may possibly waste their days felling trees with primitive tools like handsaws and axes, or digging at frozen ground. Other prisoners excavated coal or copper with bare hands, frequently resulting in awful l and fatal lung diseases from breathing ore particles. People imprisoned were scarcely fed, just enough to continue such tough labor. During their non-working time, inmates usually resided in a camp zone encircled by a fence or barbed wire, guarded by armed soldiers in specially constructed watch towers. The sector included a number of congested, rotten, slightly heated barracks. Undoubtedly, life in a camp was cruel and sadistic. Prisoners fought for gaining access to all of basic necessities, and aggression among the prisoners was ordinary. In case they endured hunger, illnesses, intense labor, and other prisoners, they might have surrendered to random violence from the camp guards.

Jewish Concentration Camps

Almost instantly following his rise to command, Hitler commenced the formation of concentration camps. Originally they were built with the intention of incarcerating political prisoners, enemies of the government and the country, criminals and various other security reasons. “While conditions were, predictably, horrible in these camps, and while the death rates were high, there is no evidence that they were used for extermination purposes. By the late 1930s there were literally hundreds of camps scattered throughout Germany and with the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, Holland and France, camps were established throughout the Reich” (The Camps). The death tolls were sky-scraping, mainly resulting from undernourishment, typhus and fatigue that the removal of corpses became a solemn dilemma. With the beginning of the Second World War, concentration camps progressively turned into places, where the opponents of the Nazis were confined, famished, tormented, and finally slaughtered. During the War concentration camps for ‘undesirable’ people multiplied all over Europe. New camps were formed close to centers of such populations as Jews, Communists, Polish intelligentsia, and Gypsies. Since the pre-war Poland served as a home for millions of Jews, most camps were situated in occupied Poland for logistical and rational reasons. Moreover, it allowed the Nazis to move the German Jews beyond the German main territory. Millions of Jews were slaughtered in the concentration camps through exploitation, illness, undernourishment, overwork or were put to death being in poor condition for labor. In the Auschwitz concentration camp alone 985,000 Jews were killed, out of which 890,000 were gassed upon arrival (The Camps). Prisoners were frequently transported in atrocious conditions by rail cargo cars, in which thousands died before even arrive at their final destination. The prisoners were restricted to the rail cars, in most cases for days or weeks, without any nutrition. Many died of dehydration in the severe heat of summer or froze to death during winter time. Concentration camps were also present in Germany itself, and while they were not purposely determined for systematic massacre, many of their prisoners passed away due to harsh conditions or putting to death.

To conclude, German concentration camps were slightly different from Gulag camps. Gulag camps mainly served as a distant place, where unwanted rebels, scientists, political leaders, and other people of talent were sent, in order to isolate them from the current Soviet regime. Differently from Gulag, German concentration camps were used for discriminatory and racial objectives, based on the fanatic ideas of the Nazi government.

Works Cited

Stalin’s Gulag. 29 Apr. 2009. <http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/>

Work in the Gulag. 29 Apr. 2009. <http://gulaghistory.org/nps/onlineexhibit/stalin/work.php>

The Camps. 29 Apr. 2009. <http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/holocamp.html>