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Cannibal Island: In 1933, Nearly 5,000 Died In One Of Stalin's Most Horrific Labor Camps
A group of "settlers" in the Narym region in the 1930s
Mass murderer Joseph Stalin is currently being rehabilitated (via alternate history) by the Putin regime.
A group of "settlers" in the Narym region in the 1930s
TOMSK, Russia – Every year, a small group of locals travels the 550 kilometers northwest from this Siberian city to Nazinsky Island, in the middle of the Ob River, to place a wreath at the foot of a wooden cross. It is a gesture of remembrance for the victims of the horrific events that unfolded there in the summer of 1933. "Every year in June, we place a wreath at the cross that was placed on the island in 1993," Valeria Shtatolkin told RFE/RL. "But this year, we couldn't go. The water was too high, and the island is almost entirely flooded." Their dedication to the pilgrimage is part of an effort to remind fellow Russians of an experiment in social engineering and self-sufficiency that went tragically wrong for many of the "settlers" lured by Soviet authorities under Josef Stalin -- whose brutal excesses have frequently been downplayed under Russia's current leadership in favor of a more forgiving historical interpretation of Stalin's three-decade rule. Eighty-five years ago in May, a small flotilla of lumber barges pulled up to Nazinsky Island and off-loaded about 3,000 "settlers" with orders to construct a "special settlement," as their little corner of Stalin's GULAG – the network of labor camps that spread across the Soviet Union where millions of people were repressed and killed -- was euphemistically called. At least 23 of the prisoners were already dead. Without tools or shelter or food and surrounded by armed guards who shot anyone who tried to brave the icy river, the prisoners quickly fell victim to starvation, disease, violence, and the brutal elements. And still, additional barges continued to pull up at the island. 3Numerous gruesome incidents of cannibalism were reported. So many, in fact, that locals came to call it Cannibal Island or the Island of Death.
By August, at least 4,000 people were dead or missing. According to a Soviet document dated August 20, 1933, there were only 2,200 survivors out of the 6,700 prisoners who had been sent to Nazinsky, a low-lying, swampy strip some 3 kilometers long and about 600 meters wide. Only 300 of those survivors were deemed at the time fit for further work. "Once a woman from the Island of Death was brought to our house," Feofila Bylina, a resident of the village of Nazino on the north bank of the Ob, recalled in an oral history in 1989. "She was being taken to another camp.... The woman was taken into the back room to spend the night and I saw that her calves had been cut off. I asked and she said, 'They did that to me on the Island of Death – cut them off and cooked them.' All the meat on her calves was cut away. Soviet documents preserved in the GULAG museum in Tomsk record the interrogations of some of these criminals who were at Nazinsky Island. One was asked if he ate "human meat." "No, that is not true," he answered. "I only ate livers and hearts." Asked for details, he said: "It was very simple. Just like shashlik. We made skewers from willow branches, cut it into pieces, stuck it on the skewers, and roasted it over the campfire." "I picked those who were not quite living, but not yet quite dead," he added. "It was obvious that they were about to go – that in a day or two, they'd give up. So it was easier for them that way. Now. Quickly. Without suffering for another two or three days." Others described women who were tied to trees while men cut off their breasts, calves, and other body parts. In 1989, the Tomsk branch of the Memorial human rights group sent an expedition to Nazinsky to gather oral histories.
Mass murderer Joseph Stalin is currently being rehabilitated (via alternate history) by the Putin regime.