Soviet Gulag

Very interesting!

Western journalists are permitted to visit the site of a former labor camp in Magadan in Siberia.

The Soviet Union wants to have the former commandant of a Nazi concentration camp, Karl Linnas, extradited from the United States to stand trial in the Soviet Union.

There is something missing here, something that the press and the public seem to have overlooked. No one seems to be asking a very pertinent question: Why aren’t the Soviets putting their own former camp commandants and guards on trial?

That the gulag exists and has existed for the past 70 years is no longer doubted by anyone. There is only a question of how many died there--10 million, 20 million, 30 million? There are many accounts--written and verbal--of the brutality, the torture, starvation, and executions. The people who ran these camps are known--most of them are retired and are living on more than adequate government pensions. Of course, all of them had just “been following orders.” But we do not accept this as an excuse from the Nazis, so should we accept the contention that Josef Stalin alone was responsible for everything?

Where is the outcry? Where are the askers of embarrassing questions? Where are the trials of these sadistic murderers? Didn’t it strike anyone as ironic that the inhabitants of Magadan today seem to be just as ignorant of what was going on in that camp during Stalin’s reign, as the Germans who lived near Dachau or Buchenwald?

SI FRUMKIN

Studio City