The tragedy at Cannibal Island, one of Stalin's most horrific labor camps

2022-12-21

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Photo: Михаил Григорьевич Прехнер (1911, Варшава — 1941, Таллин) — советский фотограф /Photo byWikimedia Commons / Public domain

It was 1933, and Joseph Stalin was the Soviet Leader. During this time, Stalin pushed for Collectivization, which was part of a five-year plan. Collectivization was to integrate individual landholdings and labor into collectively controlled farms.

They were replacing peasant farms with collective farms and hoping to increase food supply by forcing grain procurement in combination with rapid industrialization. Stalin targeted a specific group, the Kulaks. They were a group of wealthier farmers, and Stalin ordered them ¨to be liquidated as a class¨.

The persecution against the Kulaks has been ongoing since the Russian Civil War. Once Collectivization was implemented, persecution against the Kulaks increased. Many Kulaks responded in sabotage, destroying their crops, killing their animals, and destroying their tools.

Genrickh Yagoda was in charge of the new type of Gulag and even began the deportation of the prisoners before Stalin signed off approval. The original plan was to send over 2 million prisoners to Siberia and force them to create their self-sustaining Gulag, providing only the tools.

Yagoda thought having them create collective farms in Siberia would help the famine and eliminate those who disagreed with Stalin's vision.

One way to catch the Kulaks was to develop a new identification system. In December 1932, a unique ID document was issued by the Soviet government called an internal passport and denied to those ¨persons not engaged in industrial or other socially-useful work from towns¨.

Hoping this would help find the hiding Kulaks and other revolting criminals, mainly peasants. If someone was caught without an internal passport, they were immediately arrested and sent to the Gulag.

The new Gulag, at this point, had no specific area; the plan was to bring the prisoners to Siberia and decide what to do from there. With no actual preparations, the deportation of the prisoners began in April 1933, and 25,000 prisoners were brought to Tomsk, Russia.

In May 1933, Tomsk had received 90,000 prisoners and still had nothing set up and nowhere to place them. At this point, Tomsk had to do something with them and found an island in the middle of the Ob River, named after a nearby village, now known as Nazino Island. The island is now also known as Cannibal or Death Island.

It was the site selected to be the new Gulag, and Tomsk started loading the prisoners onto boats and shipping them over. Beginning with 5,000 prisoners and 50 guards, they shipped them to the island, a marshland only 600 meters wide and 3km long.

When the inmates got there, as when they arrived in Tomsk, there was nothing there for them. There was no way to survive, build houses, or create crops; it was winter in Siberia.

Not all the prisoners made it to the island. In the first group of 5000, at least 27 died on the way to the island. On the first night, 295 prisoners died, as many of those sent to the island to were from the city and had no survival skills, especially to survive the freezing temperatures of Siberia.

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On top of not having shelter or tools, they were also not given any food. Most of them had only a daily piece of bread on the boat to the island, and once they reached the island, there was no food, only flour to be rationed by the guards. On the first day, the guards gave each prisoner 200gm of flour; some were so desperate for food they mixed it with dirty river water and got dysentery.

The guards then refused to give more flour until the prisoners began to riot, so the guards devised a plan. They instructed the prisoners to form groups of 150 and select a leader to receive the flour, and then it was up to the leader to disperse the flour.

Unfortunately, that did not go so well, as the leaders did not hand out the flour; instead, they kept it for themselves. It led to further deaths, and prisoners at this point began to try to escape. There are reports that one prisoner named Salnikov escaped.

Witnesses stated, ¨Salnikov was there, but he managed to escape. He swam the river and made it through the swamps to a village. After that, he worked on a collective farm."

The rest drowned in the river, or the guards shot them as they ran away. The guards on the island were also dishonest, often trading favors with women for food or trading the gold teeth of the living or dead for a piece of bread or a cigarette.

By mid-may, one of the camp doctors noted that some of the corpses had signs of cannibalism, and when he told the officials of his findings, they responded by saying ¨the prisoners were cannibals by habit¨.

It did not stop the arrival of more prisoners, as another 1000 arrived the next day on the island. Gangs had begun to form, and the strong were taking over the sick, weak and elderly, and starvation had started to set in. They feed off of those who died and sometimes those who were not dead would be dead soon.

Some stating: "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."

By mid-June, the settlement was dissolved, the guards were sent back to Tomsk, and those who survived the island were sent to other collective farms. The island was abandoned. Of the 6700 prisoners brought to the island, only 2200 survived.

Vasily Velichko, a communist instructor, uncovered what happened on the island of death. He lived near one of the collective farms and began to hear rumors of what happened on the island of Nazino.

He heard stories of cannibalism and suffering and decided to investigate independently. At first, he did not see anything out of the ordinary, as the island was grown over with grass, but once he looked closer, he discovered half-eaten bodies. He then went on to interview those who live in the area, and they confirmed the rumors.

He submitted a report to Moscow of his findings. Instead of opening an investigation, he was fired and kicked out of the party; the report was hidden. Luckily, a few officials read it before it disappeared, and they ensured what happened on Nazino Island. A ban was placed on the resettlement program, and the guards were arrested and jailed for a year.

The report resurfaced in 1994 after the collapse of the soviet union. There were requests to place a memorial on the island, which is when they discovered what happened on Nazino Island.

A gruesome event; unfortunately, this is only one story of hundreds.

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