blaine harden camp break 14
North Korean citizens remaining in the camps
ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14:
One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea
to Freedom in the West
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"Escape from death camps(North Korea)"
International bestseller based on real events. The book was translated into 24 languages and formed the basis documentary film that has received worldwide recognition. Scandal book! The hero of the book, Shin, is the only person in the world who was born in a North Korean concentration camp and was able to escape from there.
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About the book
There are no “problems with human rights” in our country, because everyone in it lives in dignity and happy life.
[North] Korea Central News Agency, March 6, 2009
"Harden's book is not only a fascinating story told with ruthless directness, but also a storehouse of hitherto unknown information about a mysterious, like a black hole, country."
— Bill Keller, The New York Times
"An outstanding book by Blaine Harden" tells us about the dictatorial regime reigning in one of the most terrible corners of our world, much more than can be learned from thousands of textbooks ... the story of Shin's epiphany, his escape and attempts to start new life is a spellbinding, amazing book that should be required reading in schools and colleges. This heartbreaking eyewitness account of systematically monstrous atrocities is similar to The Diary of Anne Frank or Dita Pran's account of fleeing the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia in that it is impossible to read without fear that your heart will stop in horror ... Harden on Each page of the book shines with its writing skills.
– The Seattle Times
“Blaine Harden's book is unparalleled. - this is a bewitching description of a nightmarish anti-humanism, an unbearable tragedy, even more terrible because all this horror continues to happen right at this moment, and there is no end in sight.
— Terry Hong Christian Science Monitor
"If you have a heart, then Blaine Harden will change you once and for all ... Harden introduces us to Shin, showing him not as some kind of hero, but as a simple person trying to figure out everything that was done to him, and everything that he had to go through for the chance to survive. As a result, turns into a guilty verdict against the inhuman regime and a monument to those who tried with all their might not to lose their human appearance in the face of evil.
— Mitchell Zukoff, best-selling author of Lost in Shangri-La
« Outstanding history, a heart-warming tale of the awakening of a personality in a prisoner in North Korea's most severe prison."
– The Wall Street Journal
“While US policymakers wonder what the recent death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il might bring, people who read this fascinating book will better understand the brutality of the regime that remains in this strange state. Not distracted from main theme book, Harden masterfully weaves information about the history, political and social structure of North Korea into the narrative, providing a rich historical background for Shin's misadventures.
– Associated Press
"In terms of dynamics, accompanied by wonderful luck and displays of unparalleled courage, the story of Shin's escape from the camp is not inferior to the classic film" big escape". If we talk about it, as about an episode from the life ordinary person She rips her heart to shreds. If everything that he had experienced, if the fact that he saw in his family only rivals in the battle for subsistence, was shown in some feature film, you would think that the screenwriter was too fantasized. But perhaps the most important thing about this book is that it raises one issue that they try to keep quiet about, the question that the West will sooner or later have to answer for its inaction.
– The Daily Beast
“Amazing biographical book… If you really want to understand what is going on inside the rogue state, you simply must read it. This is a heartbreaking story of courage and a desperate struggle for survival, dark in places, but ultimately life-affirming."
IN " Escape from the death camp» Harden describes Sheen's entire amazing odyssey, from early childhood memories - public execution, which he witnessed at the age of four - before his activities as part of South Korean and American human rights organizations ... Retelling the almost impossible story of Shin's release, Harden sheds light on the moral ulcer of mankind, which has existed 12 times longer than the fascist concentration camps. The reader will never be able to forget the boyish and wise beyond his years Shin's smile - a new symbol of freedom defeating totalitarianism.
— Will Lislo, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Harden, with great skill, intertwines assessments of the current state of the entire North Korean society with the personal history of the life of the hero of the book. He shows us with all clarity and clarity the inner mechanics of this totalitarian state, its international politics and the consequences of the humanitarian catastrophes occurring in it ... This small book makes a strong impression. The author operates only with facts and refuses to exploit the reader's emotions, but these facts are enough to make our hearts ache, so that we start looking for Additional information and ask how we can accelerate the big change.”
— Damien Kirby, The Oregonian
“A story that is fundamentally different from all others ... Especially from other books about North Korea, including the one I wrote. shows us the unparalleled brutality on which the regime of Kim Jong Il rested. Veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden from The Washington Post leads his story simply masterfully ... An honest book, you can see it on every page.
“Harden tells a story that is breathtaking. The reader follows as Shin becomes aware of the existence outside world, normal human relationships, devoid of evil and hatred, how he finds hope ... and how painfully he goes to a new life. A book that every adult should read.
– Library Journal
“When we get to know the main character, doomed to backbreaking forced labor, deadly enmity with his own kind and life in a world where there is not a drop of human warmth, it seems to us that we are reading a dystopian thriller. But this is not fiction – this is a real life biography of Shin Dong Hyuk.”
– Publishers Weekly
"A bone-chilling, amazing story of escaping from a country no one knows anything about."
– Kirkus Reviews
“By talking about the amazing life of Sheen, Harden opens our eyes to North Korea, which exists in reality, and not in high-profile newspaper headlines, and celebrates the desire of a person to remain a person.”
- Marcus Noland, author of " Evidence of Transformation: Refugee Stories of North Korea»
"Blaine Harden from Washington Post is an experienced reporter who has traveled to many hot spots, such as the Congo, Serbia and Ethiopia. And all these countries, he makes clear in no uncertain terms, can be considered quite successful compared to North Korea... For this dark, terrifying, but, in the end, giving a certain hope book about a man with a crippled soul, who survived only thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and did not find happiness even at large, Harden deserves not just admiration, but much, much more " .
– Literary Review
“Shin’s life story, which at times is simply painful to read, tells of his physical and psychological escape from a closed prison society where there is no place for human feelings, and a journey to the joys and complexities of life in free world where a person can feel like a person.
– Kongdan Oh, co-author of The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom »
"This year there will be a lot good books. But this book is absolutely unique… Shin Dong Hyuk – only person, who was born in a North Korean political prison camp, who managed to escape and leave the country. He described his adventures in detail in conversations with veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden, who later wrote this outstanding book ... I cannot say that there are answers to the questions posed in the book. But one question is very important. And it sounds like this: “Now American schoolchildren are arguing about why President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not bomb railways leading to the Nazi death camps. But literally in a generation, their children may ask why Western countries have been inactive, looking at extremely clear and understandable satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps. Reading this book is hard. But we have to".
– Don Graham, Chairman of the Board of Directors The Washington Post
"An unforgettable adventure, the coming-of-age story of a man who had the scariest childhood imaginable"
Sheen's map of Camp 14
On the big map:
Taedong River
Camp fence - Camp fence
Guard post - Guard posts
1. The house where Shin Dong Hyuk lived
2. The field where the executions took place
3. Shin School
4. The place where Shin's class was attacked by the children of the guards
Source 5The dam where Shin worked and fished out the bodies of the drowned
6. The pig farm where Shin worked
7The Garment Factory Where Shin Learned About The Outside World
8The hedgerow where Shin escaped from the camp
On a small map:
China - China
Russia - Russia
Camp 14 - Camp 14
Korea Bay
Pyongyang – Pyongyang
Sea of Japan - Sea of Japan
Yellow Sea - Yellow Sea
South Korea - South Korea
Shin's escape route from Camp 14 to China
Approximate journey length: 560 kilometers
On the big map:
China - China
Yalu River - Yalu River
North Korea - North Korea
Camp 14 - Camp 14
Taedong River
Bukchang - Bukchang
Maengsan - Mansan
Hamhung - Hamhung
Korea Bay
Pyongyang – Pyongyang
Yellow Sea - Yellow Sea
South Korea - South Korea
Seoul - Seoul
Helong – Helong
Russia - Russia
Tumen River
Musan - Musan
Chongjin – Chongjin
Gilju - Kilju
Sea of Japan - Sea of Japan
On the small map:
Map name - KOREA REGION
Otherwise, everything is the same as in any geographical atlas.
Preface. educational moment
The first memory in his life was the execution.
His mother took him to a wheat field near the Taedong River, where the guards had already rounded up several thousand prisoners. Excited by so many people, the boy crawled under the feet of the adults into the very first row and saw the guards tying a man to a wooden pole.
Shin In Geun was only four years old, and he, of course, still could not understand the meaning of the speech delivered before the execution. But, being present at dozens of other executions in next years, he will hear more than once the head of the firing squad, addressed to the crowd, that the wise and just government of North Korea gave the condemned to death the opportunity to "atone his fault" through hard work, but he rejected this generous offer and refused to embark on the path of correction. To prevent the prisoner from shouting the last curses at the state, which was about to take his life, the guards stuffed a handful of river pebbles into his mouth, and then covered his head with a bag.
That - the very first - time, Shin watched with all his eyes as three guards took the condemned man at gunpoint. Each of them fired three shots. The roar of shots frightened the boy so much that he recoiled and fell backward on the ground, but hurriedly got to his feet and managed to see how the guards untied the limp, blood-stained body from the post, wrapped him in a blanket and threw him onto the cart.
In Camp 14, a special prison for political enemies of socialist Korea, more than two prisoners were allowed to gather only during executions. Everyone had to come to them without exception. Demonstrative executions (and the fear they instilled in people) were used in the camp as an educational moment.
Shin's teachers (and tutors) at the camp were guards. They chose his mother and father. They taught him to always remember that any violator of the camp order deserves death. On the hillside near his school was inscribed the motto: ALL LIFE ACCORDING TO RULES AND REGULATIONS. The boy learned well the ten rules of behavior in the camp, "Ten Commandments", as he later called them, and still remembers them by heart. The first rule was: Detainees attempting to escape are shot immediately.».
Ten years after that execution, the guards again gathered a huge crowd on the field, only next to the wooden pole they also built a gallows.
This time he arrived there in the back seat of a car driven by one of the guards. Shin's hands were handcuffed, and his eyes were covered with a rag. His father was sitting next to him. Also in handcuffs and also with a bandage over his eyes.
They have just been released from the underground prison located inside Camp 14, where they spent eight months. Before their release, they were given a condition: to give a non-disclosure agreement on everything that happened to them underground.
In this prison, inside the prison, Shin and his father were tortured to force a confession. The guards wanted to know about the failed escape attempt by Shin's mother and his only brother. The soldiers undressed Shin, hung him over the fire and slowly lowered him. He passed out as his flesh began to fry.
However, he did not confess to anything. He simply had nothing to confess. He did not plan to run away with his mother and brother. He sincerely believed in what he was taught from birth in the camp: firstly, it was impossible to escape, and secondly, having heard any talk about escaping, it was necessary to report them to the guards. Shin had no fantasies about life outside the camp even in his sleep.
The guards at the camp school never taught Shin what any North Korean schoolboy knows by heart: that the American "imperialist degenerates" are plotting to attack his socialist homeland, ruin and humiliate it, that the "puppet regime" of South Korea dutifully serves its American overlord, that North Korea is a great country, the courage and wisdom of its leaders is envied by the whole world ... He simply did not even know about the fact of the existence of South Korea, China or the United States.
Unlike his compatriots, little Shin was not surrounded by the ubiquitous portraits of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. Moreover, he never saw any photographs or statues of his father, the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, who remains the Eternal President of the DPRK despite his death in 1994.
Although Shin was not so important for the regime, to spend time and effort on his indoctrination, he was taught to inform on relatives and classmates from an early age. As a reward for squealing, he was given food, and also allowed, along with the guards, to beat the children devoted to them. Classmates, in turn, pawned and beat him. When the guard removed the blindfold from his eyes, Shin saw the crowd, the wooden pole, the gallows, and thought that he was about to be executed. However, no one began to put a handful of stones in his mouth. The handcuffs were removed from him. The soldier led him to the front row of the waiting crowd. He and his father were assigned the role of observers.
The guards dragged a middle-aged woman to the gallows, and tied a young man to a post. They were Shin's mother and older brother.
The soldier tightened the noose around his mother's neck. The mother tried to catch Shin's eye, but he averted his eyes. When the convulsions stopped and her body went limp, three guards shot Brother Shin. Each of them fired three shots.
Shin watched them die and was glad he wasn't in their shoes. He was very angry at his mother and brother for trying to escape. And although he did not admit this to anyone for 15 years, Shin was sure that it was he who was to blame for their death.
Introduction. He never heard the word "love"
Nine years after his mother's execution, Shin squeezed between rows of electrified barbed wire and ran across a snowy plain. It happened on November 2, 2005. Before him, no one born in North Korean political prison camps had ever escaped. According to all available data, Shin was the first and on this moment the only one who made it.
He was 23, and outside the barbed-wire camp, he did not know a single living soul.
A month later, he crossed the border to the Chinese side. Two years later he was already living in South Korea. Four years later, he settled in Southern California and began working as an authorized representative of the American human rights organization Liberty in North Korea, or LiNK.
In California, he rode his bike to work, supported the Cleveland Indians baseball team (because South Korean Shin Soo Choo played for them), and ate lunch at the In-N-Out Burger two or three times a week, believing that hamburgers You won't find better ones there in the whole world.
Now his name is Shin Dong Hyuk. He changed his name immediately after arriving in South Korea, thus trying to start a new life - the life of a free man. Today he is a handsome man with a tenacious, always wary look. One of the dentists in Los Angeles had to work hard on his teeth, which he had no opportunity to clean in the camp. In general, he is almost perfectly healthy. But his body has turned into clear evidence of all the hardships and hardships of his childhood spent in one of the labor camps, the very existence of which North Korea categorically denies.
From constant malnutrition, he remained very short and thin: his height is less than 170 centimeters, and his weight is only 55 kilograms. His hands are twisted from overwork. The lower back and buttocks are covered with burn scars. On the skin of the abdomen, just above the pubis, punctures are visible from the iron hook that held his body over the torture fire. His ankles were scarred from the fetters by which he was hung upside down in solitary confinement. His legs from ankles to knees are mangled with burns and scars from the electrified barbed wire cordons that failed to hold him in Camp 14.
Shin is about the same age as Kim Jong Un, the plump, chubby third son and Kim Cher Il's official "great heir". Being almost peers, these two antipodes personify endless privileges and total poverty, that is, the two poles of life in North Korea, a formally classless society, where in fact the fate of a person depends entirely on blood relationship and the merits or sins of his ancestors.
Kim Jong Un was born a communist prince and raised behind palace walls. Under an assumed name, he completed his secondary education in Switzerland before returning to North Korea to study at an elite university named after his grandfather. Due to its origin, it is above any laws and has unlimited possibilities. In 2010, despite complete absence military experience, was promoted to the rank of General of the Army.
Shin was born a slave and grew up behind a fence made of barbed wire, through which electricity was passed. high voltage. He received elementary skills in reading and counting at the camp school. His blood was hopelessly stained by the crimes of his father's brothers, and therefore he had no rights and opportunities. The state had sentenced him in advance: overwork and early death from diseases caused by malnutrition ... and all this without trial, investigation, the possibility of appeal ... and in complete secrecy.
Stories about people who managed to survive in concentration camps are most often built on a fairly standard plot scheme. The state security agencies take the protagonist from a cozy home, tearing him away from his loving relatives and friends. To survive, he has to drop everything moral principles and human feelings, cease to be a man and turn into a "lone wolf".
The most famous story of this type is probably "Night" Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel. The 13-year-old narrator in this book explains his torment by recounting the normal life that existed before he and his entire family were herded into wagons going to German death camps. Wiesel studied the Talmud every day. His father was the owner of a store, looked after the order in their native Romanian village. There was always a grandfather nearby, with whom they celebrated all the Jewish holidays. But after the whole family died in the camps, Wiesel felt “loneliness, terrible loneliness in a world without God, without man. Without love and compassion."
But Shin's survival story is very different.
He was beaten by his mother, and he saw in her only a rival in the fight for food. His father, who was only allowed to sleep with his mother five nights a year by the guards, completely ignored him. Shin barely knew his brother. The children in the camp were at enmity and mocked each other. Among other things in his life, Shin learned that the key to survival is the ability to snitch on others first.
The words "love", "pity" and "family" had no meaning to him. God did not die in his soul and did not disappear from his life. Shin had never even heard of God. In the preface to his Night, Wiesel wrote that the child's knowledge of death and evil "should be limited to what can be learned about them from literature."
Shin at Camp 14 did not know that literature existed. He saw only one book there, a Korean grammar book. She was often held in the hands of a teacher dressed in military uniform, who wore a holster with a revolver on his belt, and once beat one of his classmates to death with a heavy pointer.
Unlike those who fought for survival in concentration camps, Shin never felt that he was torn out of a normal civilized life and cast down to the bottom of hell. He was born and raised in this hell. He accepted his laws and regulations. He considered this hell to be his home.
At the moment, we can say that the North Korean labor camps lasted twice as long as the Soviet Gulag and 12 times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. The location of these camps is no longer in dispute: high-definition satellite photos that anyone with Internet access can view on Google Earth show gigantic fenced areas among North Korean mountain ranges.
South Korean government organizations estimate that there are about 154,000 prisoners in these camps. The U.S. State Department and several advocacy groups estimate the number of detainees as high as 200,000. After reviewing decades of satellite imagery of the camps, Amnesty International analysts noted that new construction began on their campus in 2011, and suggested with great concern that this was taking place in as a result of a sharp increase in the population of such areas. It is likely that in this way the North Korean intelligence services are trying to eliminate the possibility of popular unrest in the bud during the transition of power from Kim Jong Il to his young and untested son. (1)
According to South Korean intelligence and human rights organizations, there are six such camps in the country. The largest stretches for 50 km in length and 40 km in width, i.e., it is larger than Los Angeles in area. Most of the camps are surrounded by electrified barbed wire fences with watchtowers, along which armed guards constantly patrol. In two camps - No. 15 and No. 18 - there are zones of revolutionization, where the most successful of the prisoners undergo an ideological retraining course and study the works of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. Those who are able to memorize these teachings and prove their loyalty to the regime may get a chance to go free, but even in this case, they will remain under the close supervision of state security for the rest of their lives.
The rest of the camps are "zones of complete control" where prisoners considered "incorrigible" (2) are brought to death by backbreaking labor.
It is such an area of total control that is Camp 14, where Shin lived - the most terrible of all. It is here that many party, state and military officials who suffered in the “purges” are sent, often with their families. This camp, founded in 1959, located in the central region of North Korea (near the town of Kaechon in the province of South Pyongan), holds up to 15,000 prisoners. Spread across deep mountain gorges and valleys, a territory about 50 km long and 25 km wide is home to agricultural enterprises, mines and factories.
Shin is the only person born in the labor camp who managed to escape, but at the moment there are at least 60 other eyewitnesses in the free world who have been in such camps. (3) At least 15 of them are North Korean citizens who underwent ideological re-education in the special zone of Camp 15, thus earning their freedom and later managed to cross over to South Korea. The former guards of other labor camps also managed to escape to South Korea. A former lieutenant colonel in the North Korean army, Kim Yong, who once held high posts in Pyongyang, spent six years in two camps and managed to escape by hiding in a train car carrying coal.
After carefully studying the testimonies of these people, representatives of the South Korean Bar Association in Seoul made the maximum detailed description Everyday life in the camps. Every year they hold several demonstration executions. Others are beaten to death or shot by guards with virtually unlimited licenses to kill and sexual abuse. Most of the prisoners are employed in growing crops, extracting coal from mines, sewing army uniforms, and producing cement. The prisoners' daily ration consists of corn, cabbage, and salt, in quantities just enough to keep them from starving to death. Their teeth fall out, their gums turn black, and their bones lose strength. By the age of 40, most of them can no longer straighten up and walk in full height. Prisoners receive one or two sets of clothes a year, so they have to live, sleep and work in dirty rags, without soap, socks, mittens, underwear and toilet paper. They are required to work 12-15 hours a day until death, which occurs, as a rule, from diseases caused by malnutrition, even before the age of 50. (4) Accurate data on the number of dead is almost impossible to obtain, but according to estimates by Western government and human rights organizations, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people died in these camps.
In most cases, North Korean citizens are sent to the camps without trial or investigation, and many of them die there without knowing the nature of the charges or the verdict. Employees of the Department of State Security (part of the police apparatus with 270,000 employees in the state (5)) pick up people directly from their homes, most often at night. The principle of extending the guilt of the convict to all members of his family has the force of law in North Korea. Together with the "criminal" his parents and children are often arrested. Kim Il Sung formulated this law in 1972 as follows: "The seed of our class enemies, whoever they may be, must be eradicated from society in three generations."
The first time I saw Shin was in the winter of 2008. We agreed to meet at a Korean restaurant in downtown Seoul. Shin was talkative and very hungry. During our conversation, he ate several portions of rice with beef. As we ate, he told the interpreter and me about what it was like to watch his mother being hanged. He blamed her for the torture suffered in the camp and even admitted that he still hates her for it. He also said that he had never been good son' but didn't explain why.
He said that in all his camp years he never heard the word "love", especially from his mother, a woman whom he continues to despise even after her death. He first heard about the concept of forgiveness in a South Korean church. But he did not understand its essence. According to him, asking for forgiveness in Camp 14 simply meant “begging not to punish.”
He wrote a book of memoirs about his experiences in the camp, but few people in South Korea were interested in it. At the time of our meeting, he had no job, no money, he was heavily in debt for an apartment and did not know what to do next. The rules at Camp 14, on pain of death, forbade intimate contact with women. Now he wanted to start a normal life and find a girlfriend, but he, in his own words, did not even know where to start looking and how to do it.
After dinner, he took me to his squalid, but nonetheless prohibitively expensive Seoul apartment. Stubbornly trying not to look me in the eye, he nevertheless showed me his severed finger and scarred back. He allowed me to take a picture of himself. Despite all the suffering he had endured, his face was quite childish. He was then 26 years old… three years have passed since the escape from Camp 14.
Tomorrow, May 3, the film "Sobibor", which became the debut directorial work of Konstantin Khabensky, will be released in Russian cinemas. The picture tells about the rebellion of prisoners in the Nazi concentration camp of the same name, located on the territory of occupied Poland, and about the feat of the Soviet officer Alexander Pechersky, who raised an uprising there.
On October 14, 1943, SS Untersturmführer Ernst Berg entered the tailoring workshop of the Sobibor concentration camp. Berg was not exactly eager to communicate with the prisoners, but he was supposed to have a uniform sewn, and the SS man was going to try on. The uniform was ready, it was good, and this was the last impression in Berg's life. As soon as he took off his belt with a holster to change clothes, an ax fell on his head. Thus began a remarkably successful uprising in the Nazi extermination camp.
Alexander Pechersky was not going to become a hero, and it cannot be said that he went to his feat all his life. He was born in Kremenchug, graduated from high school, then worked as an employee, led a musical circle of amateur performances. In general, his pre-war biography looked cozy and unremarkable. Everything changed in 1941.
Pechersky was drafted into the army on June 22, in September he was promoted to quartermaster of the second rank (lieutenant rank) and sent to a headquarters position in an artillery regiment east of Smolensk. At that time it was a quiet section of the front. However, just a few weeks later, one of the biggest battles World War II - the battle for Moscow.
This battle began with a great catastrophe - a double encirclement Soviet troops near Vyazma and Bryansk. Pechersky got into it along with others. His small band wandered through the woods until they ran out of food and ammunition. A dozen soldiers with wounded on their hands had no chance of salvation. In the end, the remnants of the broken unit ran into an ambush and laid down their weapons.
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Sobibor, Poland, 1943. Photo © Wikimedia Commons
">This camp, located in eastern Poland, enjoyed a gloomy reputation even in the general background. It was founded in 1942 to exterminate the Jews, and in less than a year and a half, a quarter of a million people went to the next world. Upon arrival, when the prisoners were being sorted, Pechersky declared that he was supposedly a carpenter. It was a smart idea: people who did not have any useful specialty were quickly executed. The gas chambers, which became a symbol of the Nazi genocide, were actually not found in all concentration camps, but Sobibor was one of them. People were herded into the building, which was called a bathhouse. This building could accommodate 800 people at a time. For a quarter of an hour, people were suffocated with gas, after which it remained only to remove the corpses.
Sobibor consisted of three sectors. In one, sorting took place, seizing things from those who had something to take. After that, they were sent to another section of the concentration camp, where mass executions took place. Finally, in the third section of the camp there were workshops where the prisoners lived in bad conditions, but at least they were not immediately destroyed there.
The Nazis moved quickly, so that there were rarely many people in the camp at the same time. Escape attempts were stopped quickly and brutally. Together with those who tried to escape, they shot those who could have known about the escape, but did not inform. Karl Frenzel, the commander of the sector where Pechersky was imprisoned, personally participated in the executions and killed over forty people with his own hands. The conditions of detention were unbearable even for working prisoners: poor food, fierce punishments for the slightest offense, murders.
Pechersky was well aware that in the event of an unsuccessful escape, he would go to the gas chamber himself, and if he escaped alone, the Nazis would kill his cellmates. On December 2, one of the prisoners told Pechersky that he wanted to escape with a small group of comrades. The lieutenant dissuaded his comrade in misfortune from rash actions.
Pechersky was not going to sit idly by. He decided to arrange a mass riot and the flight of everyone who was able to escape, especially since Pechersky concluded from conversations with other prisoners that many would like to take the risk. There was no question of the leader of the uprising: the Red Army lieutenant had not only military experience, but also innate leadership qualities.
Riot in the camp
Everyone knew that the administration had informants among the campers. In addition, even without traitors, if many people knew about the escape, it would be very easy to pierce by chance. Therefore, only a few people knew about the planned uprising, whom Pechersky, of course, trusted. From the old prisoners who had been in Sobibor for many months, Pechersky found out something about the security regime.
At first they thought of digging a tunnel. But it was too difficult and risky, besides, the prisoners would run out through the tunnel too slowly. Therefore, the captives decided on a more radical way - to attack the guards and destroy the guards. To do this, they could use the tools of the workshops, besides, Pechersky ordered to make several dozen knives and stilettos. In addition, they prepared scissors for cutting barbed wire.
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The lieutenant's plan was quite complex. It was necessary to kill the leadership of the guard, and imperceptibly, so that the alarm was raised as late as possible. Brzetsky, who went over to the side of the rebels, provided valuable assistance: he took Pechersky to the security barracks, ostensibly for repairs, but in fact, so that he could inspect it.
On October 14, on a warm, mild day, the prisoners prepared for an unprecedented uprising. The rebels received detailed instructions a few hours before the uprising. The shock group was made up of Soviet prisoners with knives and handicraft axes. The first Germans were to be killed by luring them into the workshops under the pretext of trying on clothes made for them or taken from fresh prisoners.
Brzetski defiantly bludgeoned the prisoners all day to avert suspicion. The whole thing almost fell apart because of his unscheduled dispatch to load logs. Kapo was needed: according to the general plan, he was supposed to escort several rebels to the "sorting" camp in order to cut the lines of communication. He was replaced by another overseer who was in cahoots with the rebels. He took a group led by Boris Tsybulsky to the second camp, ostensibly for some kind of work.
Meanwhile, the first Nazi appointed as a victim, Ernst Berg, rode up to the tailoring workshop where the rebels were sitting. Alexander Shubaev was already waiting for him with a hidden ax. As soon as the German took off his uniform and unfastened his pistol, Shubaev slashed him on the back of the head. The weakened prisoner could not kill him with one blow, Berg began to yell, but on the second attempt he was finished off. There was no way back. A few minutes later, another German entered the workshop. A blow to the head - and the second guard lay down next to the first.
To try on boots, coats, overcoats and uniforms, several guards were called at once at different times in different workshops. So far everything was going great. At this time, Tsybulsky's group cut the telephone lines. The prisoners also managed to disable the transport. Amazingly, several leaders of the camp guards have already been killed, vehicles and communications have been disabled, and no one has raised the alarm yet. It was not possible to destroy the commandant Frenzel, but there was no time to wait for him to deign to appear within reach. Pechersky gave a signal - and the uprising began openly.
The head of the guard at the gate did not have time to understand what was happening before he was killed. The rebels already had the weapons of the escorts in their hands, and they acted quickly, decisively, with the despair of the doomed. More than four hundred people rushed to freedom. The surviving part of the guard understood what was happening, but the shooting could no longer stop anyone. The rebels passed the minefield in a human wave. Those who were going first threw boards in front, trying to blow up the mines, but hardly with a serious effect: dozens of people died in the mines. They also failed to capture the armory, but the wave of people was already rolling outside the camp.
Eighty prisoners were killed on mines and under fire from guards. 130 remained in the camp - some out of fear, some already too weak and unable to walk. But 340 people escaped into the forests. Behind them were 11 dead SS men.
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A small detachment of Pechersky wandered through the forests for several days. However, they were lucky: Sobibor was still not in the depths of the Reich. In the Belarusian forests of the 43rd, an invisible from the outside, but intense life was going on. Soon the rebels were picked up by partisans. Pechersky still considered himself a Soviet soldier and naturally joined them. After the liberation of Belarus by the Red Army, Pechersky got into the emerging assault battalion and told his story to the battalion commander.
He, shocked by Pechersky's story, arranged for him to travel to Moscow to speak before a commission investigating Nazi crimes. After that, he went to the front to finish the war. Pechersky served in a specific formation - an assault battalion. These units were formed from officers who were in the occupied territory or in captivity. They were not considered penal battalions, their employees were not deprived of their ranks, however, attack aircraft, like penal fighters, operated in the most dangerous areas. In August 1944, Pechersky was wounded in the thigh, awarded and commissioned.
Subsequently, Pechersky acted as a witness at the trials of collaborators who served as overseers in Sobibor. The Germans liquidated the concentration camp, but many criminals were brought to justice. Commandant Frenzel was sentenced to life imprisonment in the 60s, but pardoned at the end of 1992, after serving 30 years. Franz Reichleitner, commandant of Sobibor at the time of the uprising, was killed by Italian partisans in January 1944.
Baranovichi - Sobibor - Berlin.
The uprisings in the Nazi extermination camps were rarely as successful as in Sobibór. Only the uprising in Buchenwald in April 1945 was just as effective. Pechersky and his comrades were able to survive where almost no one survived, and win where it was impossible to win.
Blaine Harden Escape from the death camp
North Korean citizens remaining in the camps
ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14:
One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea
to Freedom in the West
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"Escape from the Death Camp (North Korea)"
An international bestseller based on true events. The book was translated into 24 languages and formed the basis of a documentary film that received worldwide recognition. Scandal book! The hero of the book, Shin, is the only person in the world who was born in a North Korean concentration camp and was able to escape from there.
“Tomorrow I go to kill. Memories of a boy soldier
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There are no “problems with human rights” in our country, because everyone in it lives a decent and happy life.
"Harden's book is not only a fascinating story told with ruthless directness, but also a storehouse of hitherto unknown information about a mysterious, like a black hole, country."
— Bill Keller, The New York Times
"An outstanding book by Blaine Harden" Escape from the death camp tells us about the dictatorial regime reigning in one of the most terrible corners of our world, much more than can be learned from thousands of textbooks ... "Escape from the death camp" the story of Sheen's epiphany, his escape and attempts to start a new life, this is a bewitching, amazing book that should be made required reading in schools and colleges. This heartbreaking eyewitness account of systematically monstrous atrocities is similar to The Diary of Anne Frank or Dita Pran's account of fleeing the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia in that it is impossible to read without fear that your heart will stop in horror ... Harden on Each page of the book shines with its writing skills.
– The Seattle Times
“Blaine Harden's book is unparalleled. "Escape from the death camp"- this is a bewitching description of a nightmarish anti-humanism, an unbearable tragedy, even more terrible because all this horror continues to happen right at this moment, and there is no end in sight.
— Terry Hong Christian Science Monitor
"If you have a heart, then "Escape from the death camp" Blaine Harden will change you once and for all ... Harden introduces us to Shin, showing him not as some kind of hero, but as a simple person trying to figure out everything that was done to him, and everything that he had to go through for the chance to survive. As a result, "Escape from the death camp" turns into a guilty verdict against the inhuman regime and a monument to those who tried with all their might not to lose their human appearance in the face of evil.
"An outstanding story, a heart-searing story about the awakening of a personality in a prisoner of the most severe prison in North Korea."
– The Wall Street Journal
“While US policymakers wonder what the recent death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il might bring, people who read this fascinating book will better understand the brutality of the regime that remains in this strange state. Without digressing from the main theme of the book, Harden masterfully weaves information about the history, political and social structure of North Korea into the narrative, providing a rich historical background for Shin's misadventures.
– Associated Press
"In terms of dynamics, accompanied by wonderful luck and displays of unparalleled courage, the story of Shin's escape from the camp is not inferior to the classic film" big escape". If we talk about it as an episode from the life of an ordinary person, then it tears the heart to shreds. If everything that he had experienced, if the fact that he saw his family only as rivals in the battle for subsistence, was shown in some feature film, you would think that the screenwriter was too fantasized. But perhaps the most important thing about this book is that it raises one issue that they try to keep quiet about, the question that the West will sooner or later have to answer for its inaction.
– The Daily Beast
“Amazing biographical book… If you really want to understand what is going on inside the rogue state, you simply must read it. This is a heartbreaking story of courage and a desperate struggle for survival, dark in places, but ultimately life-affirming."
IN " Escape from the death camp» Harden describes the whole amazing odyssey of Shin, from the first childhood memories - a public execution, which he witnessed at the age of four - to his activities in South Korean and American human rights organizations ... By retelling the almost impossible story of Shin's release, Harden sheds light on the moral scourge of humanity, existing 12 times longer than the Nazi concentration camps. The reader will never be able to forget the boyish and wise beyond his years Shin's smile - a new symbol of freedom defeating totalitarianism.
— Will Lislo, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Harden, with great skill, intertwines assessments of the current state of the entire North Korean society with the personal history of the life of the hero of the book. He clearly and clearly shows us the internal mechanics of this totalitarian state, its international politics and the consequences of the humanitarian catastrophes taking place in it ... This small book makes a strong impression. The author operates only with facts and refuses to exploit the emotions of the reader, but these facts are enough to make our hearts ache, so that we begin to look for additional information and wonder how we could accelerate the onset of big changes.
— Damien Kirby, The Oregonian
North Korean citizens remaining in the camps
There are no “problems with human rights” in our country, because everyone in it lives a decent and happy life.
Foreword
The first memory in his life was the execution. His mother took him to a wheat field near the Taedong River, where the guards had already rounded up several thousand prisoners. Excited by so many people, the boy crawled under the feet of the adults into the very first row and saw the guards tying a man to a wooden pole.
Shin In Geun was only four years old, and he, of course, still could not understand the meaning of the speech delivered before the execution. But as he attended dozens of other executions in the years to come, he would hear more than once the head of the firing squad tell the crowd that the wise and just government of North Korea gave the death-row man the opportunity to “redeem himself” through hard work, but he rejected this generous offer and refused to take the path of correction. To prevent the prisoner from shouting the last curses at the state, which was about to take his life, the guards stuffed a handful of river pebbles into his mouth, and then covered his head with a bag.
On that very first time, Shin watched with all his eyes as three guards took aim at the condemned man. Each of them fired three shots. The roar of shots frightened the boy so much that he recoiled and fell backward on the ground, but hurriedly got to his feet and managed to see how the guards untied the limp, blood-stained body from the post, wrapped him in a blanket and threw him onto the cart.
In Camp 14, a special prison for political enemies of socialist Korea, more than two prisoners were allowed to gather only during executions. Everyone had to come to them without exception. Demonstrative executions (and the fear they instilled in people) were used in the camp as an educational moment.
Shin's teachers (and tutors) at the camp were guards. They chose his mother and father. They taught him to always remember that any violator of the camp order deserves death. On the hillside near his school was inscribed the motto: ALL LIFE ACCORDING TO RULES AND REGULATIONS. The boy learned well the ten rules of behavior in the camp, "Ten Commandments", as he later called them, and still remembers them by heart. The first rule was: "detainees attempting to escape are shot immediately."
Ten years after that execution, the guards again gathered a huge crowd on the field, only next to the wooden pole they also built a gallows.
This time he arrived there in the back seat of a car driven by one of the guards. Shin's hands were handcuffed, and his eyes were covered with a rag. His father was sitting next to him. Also in handcuffs and also with a bandage over his eyes.
They have just been released from the underground prison located inside Camp 14, where they spent eight months. Before their release, they were given a condition: to give a non-disclosure agreement on everything that happened to them underground.
In this prison, inside the prison, Shin and his father were tortured to force a confession. The guards wanted to know about the failed escape attempt by Shin's mother and his only brother. The soldiers undressed Shin, hung him over the fire and slowly lowered him. He passed out as his flesh began to fry.
However, he did not confess to anything. He simply had nothing to confess. He did not plan to run away with his mother and brother. He sincerely believed in what he was taught from birth in the camp: firstly, it was impossible to escape, and secondly, having heard any talk about escaping, it was necessary to report them to the guards.
Blaine Harden
Escape from the death camp
North Korean citizens remaining in the camps
...Blaine Harden
ESCAPE FROM CAMP 14:
One Man\"s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea
to Freedom in the West
There are no “problems with human rights” in our country, because everyone in it lives a decent and happy life.
..."Harden's book is not only a fascinating story told with ruthless directness, but also a storehouse of hitherto unknown information about a mysterious, like a black hole, country."
— Bill Keller, The New York Times
..."An outstanding book by Blaine Harden" Escape from the death camp tells us about the dictatorial regime reigning in one of the most terrible corners of our world, much more than can be learned from thousands of textbooks ... "Escape from the death camp" the story of Sheen's epiphany, his escape and attempts to start a new life, this is a bewitching, amazing book that should be made required reading in schools and colleges. This heartbreaking eyewitness account of systematically monstrous atrocities is similar to The Diary of Anne Frank or Dita Pran's account of fleeing the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia in that it is impossible to read without fear that your heart will stop in horror ... Harden on Each page of the book shines with its writing skills.
– The Seattle Times
...“Blaine Harden's book is unparalleled. "Escape from the death camp"- this is a bewitching description of a nightmarish anti-humanism, an unbearable tragedy, even more terrible because all this horror continues to happen right at this moment, and there is no end in sight.
— Terry Hong Christian Science Monitor
..."If you have a heart, then "Escape from the death camp" Blaine Harden will change you once and for all ... Harden introduces us to Shin, showing him not as some kind of hero, but as a simple person trying to figure out everything that was done to him, and everything that he had to go through for the chance to survive. As a result, "Escape from the death camp" turns into a guilty verdict against the inhuman regime and a monument to those who tried with all their might not to lose their human appearance in the face of evil.
..."An outstanding story, a heart-searing story about the awakening of a personality in a prisoner of the most severe prison in North Korea."
– The Wall Street Journal
...“While US policymakers wonder what the recent death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il might bring, people who read this fascinating book will better understand the brutality of the regime that remains in this strange state. Without digressing from the main theme of the book, Harden masterfully weaves information about the history, political and social structure of North Korea into the narrative, providing a rich historical background for Shin's misadventures.
– Associated Press
..."In terms of dynamics, accompanied by wonderful luck and displays of unparalleled courage, the story of Shin's escape from the camp is not inferior to the classic film" big escape". If we talk about it as an episode from the life of an ordinary person, then it tears the heart to shreds. If everything that he had experienced, if the fact that he saw his family only as rivals in the battle for subsistence, was shown in some feature film, you would think that the screenwriter was too fantasized. But perhaps the most important thing about this book is that it raises one issue that they try to keep quiet about, the question that the West will sooner or later have to answer for its inaction.
– The Daily Beast
...“Amazing biographical book… If you really want to understand what is going on inside the rogue state, you simply must read it. This is a heartbreaking story of courage and a desperate struggle for survival, dark in places, but ultimately life-affirming."
– CNN
...IN " Escape from the death camp» Harden describes the whole amazing odyssey of Shin, from the first childhood memories - a public execution, which he witnessed at the age of four - to his activities in South Korean and American human rights organizations ... By retelling the almost impossible story of Shin's release, Harden sheds light on the moral scourge of humanity, existing 12 times longer than the Nazi concentration camps. The reader will never be able to forget the boyish and wise beyond his years Shin's smile - a new symbol of freedom defeating totalitarianism.
— Will Lislo, Minneapolis Star Tribune
...“Harden, with great skill, intertwines assessments of the current state of the entire North Korean society with the personal history of the life of the hero of the book. He clearly and clearly shows us the internal mechanics of this totalitarian state, its international politics and the consequences of the humanitarian catastrophes taking place in it ... This small book makes a strong impression. The author operates only with facts and refuses to exploit the emotions of the reader, but these facts are enough to make our hearts ache, so that we begin to look for additional information and wonder how we could accelerate the onset of big changes.
— Damien Kirby, The Oregonian
...“A story that is fundamentally different from all others ... Especially from other books about North Korea, including the one I wrote. "Escape from the death camp" shows us the unparalleled brutality on which the regime of Kim Jong Il rested. Veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden from The Washington Post leads his story simply masterfully ... An honest book, you can see it on every page.
...“Harden tells a story that is breathtaking. The reader follows how Shin learns about the existence of the outside world, normal human relationships, devoid of evil and hatred, how he gains hope ... and how painfully he goes to a new life. A book that every adult should read.
– Library Journal
...“When we get to know the main character, doomed to backbreaking forced labor, deadly enmity with his own kind and life in a world where there is not a drop of human warmth, it seems to us that we are reading a dystopian thriller. But this is not fiction – this is a real life biography of Shin Dong Hyuk.”
– Publishers Weekly
..."A bone-chilling, amazing story of escaping from a country no one knows anything about."
– Kirkus Reviews
...“By talking about the amazing life of Sheen, Harden opens our eyes to North Korea, which exists in reality, and not in high-profile newspaper headlines, and celebrates the desire of a person to remain a person.”
..."Blaine Harden from Washington Post is an experienced reporter who has traveled to many hot spots, such as the Congo, Serbia and Ethiopia. And all these countries, he makes clear in no uncertain terms, can be considered quite successful compared to North Korea ... For this dark, terrifying, but, in the end, gives a certain hope book about a man with a crippled soul, who survived only thanks to a fortunate combination of circumstances and who did not find happiness even in freedom, Harden deserves not just admiration, but much, much more.
– Literary Review
..."Sheen's life story, which at times is simply painful to read, tells of his physical and psychological escape from a closed prison society where there is no place for human feelings, and a journey to the joys and difficulties of life in a free world where a person can feel like a person."
...“There are a lot of good books coming out this year. But this book is absolutely unique... Shin Dong Hyuk is the only person born in a North Korean political prison camp who managed to escape and leave the country. He described his adventures in detail in conversations with veteran foreign journalist Blaine Harden, who later wrote this outstanding book ... I cannot say that there are answers to the questions posed in the book. But one question is very important. And it sounds like this: “Now American schoolchildren are arguing about why President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not bomb the railroads leading to the Nazi death camps. But literally in a generation, their children may ask why Western countries have been inactive, looking at extremely clear and understandable satellite images of Kim Jong Il's camps. Reading this book is hard. But we have to".
