Eyewitness Accounts: I Was a Slave in Russia

2014 | Biography

"It is hard to describe a nightmare adequately, unless you can say how the day had been before the night fell." In late 1945, John H. Noble was arrested by Soviet occupation forces on a trumped-up espionage charge. Ten years later, he found himself a prisoner in Vorkuta, part of the Soviet Gulag system. Situated 50 miles above the Arctic Circle, temperatures in Vorkuta drop too low for bacteria to survive. As an American prisoner during the Cold War, Noble's is a harrowing and unique story. Forced to work in the mines, his weight dropped from 150 to 95 pounds as he pushed 2-ton coal cars. He was also a key player in the 1953 Vorkuta Uprising, a peaceful protest violently ended by the Blatnois. Noble was eventually released in 1955, following the intervention of US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Here, in this extraordinary document, he tells his unbelievable story. This is an unflinching look at the true face of Communism and a gripping account of one man's survival against seemingly impossible odds.

John H. Noble (Author)