JOURNEYS Mennonite Stories of Faith and Survival in Stalins Russia, John B. Toews, 1998

e bandits convinced them otherwise. Not long after “Trotsky” showed up and also laid down. Twenty-four hours later I was called out and told to pick up my things in the next building. Some twenty men were placed on a truck and driven to the train station. A single railway car awaited us. We boarded and soon the train left for an unknown and cer¬ tainly perilous destination. Our section was spacious and we were even allowed to walk from one section to another. Naturally the doors and windows were barred. The bunks were like those of a regular passenger train. Silence reigned. All were strangers to one another, each sat lost in his own thoughts. Happily they were all decent people. I was so thankful to be rid of the criminals. The air was fresh, the bread was somewhat tastier, but the soup was as thin as ever. Soon we lay down to sleep. What did the future hold for us? The Island on the Steppe. The Karaganda Concentration Camp 1936 — 1944 We arrived in the old section of Karaganda. The new section was built later by the German prisoners of war. It was a vast re¬ gion with immense coal reserves. Exiled Russo-Germans, some as young as fourteen, labored in these mines as part of the Work ISLAND IN THE STEPPE 115 Army .... As far as the eye could see there were large and small piles of refuse. A smog consisting of smoke and soot hung over the entire region. We were led down a single street. Pitiful, crum¬ bling earthen huts, built halfway into the ground, stood on both sides of the street. Tall weeds covered the sod roofs. Here and there were small dirty windows. Nothing green anywhere — only the monotonous, grey landscape. The few people we encountered stopped and looked almost as if they were searching for known faces. We moved from the old section of the city to a large area sur¬ rounded by barbed wire, with armed guards in the corner guard towers. They awaited us at the gate. As we entered we were counted and each received his number. Mine was 119,715. We were lined up and the commandant invited us to occupy one of the earthen huts. There was room for all he said. Then he called the three of us who had been specifically sent here by GULAG central in Mos¬ cow. A specialist in animal husbandry, an agriculturalist and I occupied the same hut. It had the usual furnishings — wooden bed frames and mattresses filled with straw. It was evening. We obtained some boiled water and ate the bit of dry bread we saved from lunch. We were almost at our destination. Somewhere not far from here was the concentration camp Karaganda, called KARLAG in abbreviated form. Next morning we were loaded in a truck and off we went. Two guards accompanied us - one sat in the back with us, the other in the cab. As far as the eye could see the steppe stretched endlessly in varying shades of grey. We passed through the village of Dubovka, but still had twenty-five kilometers to drive. Finally we reached Dolinka, the ad