Kazakhstan, San Marino & Selva

Met some Tartan Army guys the day before, funnily enough in a bar 🙂, who said they'd organised a trip to a Gulag, and would I like to go too. Never one to miss something different I signed up for it.

In the 1930s in the town of Akmol, about 20 miles west of Astana, Joseph Stalin established a special gulag named the “Akmola Labor Camp for the Wives of the Betrayers of the Homeland,” more commonly known by its Russian acronym, ALZHIR. The camp imprisoned women and children whose only crime was to be related to a man who had been denounced by the state, often for no discernible reason.

The prisoners toiled at producing clothes and materials for soldiers fighting in World War II. Summers here experience temperatures approaching 40 degrees Celsius while in winter, the mercury can sag to less than 40 below, and camp conditions were hardly sufficient to accommodate the climate.

Remarkably, Kazakhstan’s officials do not attempt to obscure this dismal heritage, but rather have built and promoted a museum to commemorate those who suffered and died at ALZHIR.  An historic rail carriage, reconstructed guard tower, and multiple sculptures surround the uniquely designed museum, which contains numerous relics and related stories that recount the painful details of prison life.  The biographies of those who survived are a true testament to the strength of the human spirit.  Sadly, as the exhibits demonstrate, too many women’s stories ended in tragedy. 

One woman's story recounts how she thought the local Kazakh's were throwing stones at her through the fence, it was actually frozen bread to help them. A very poignant place, with a video from the first President of Kazakhstan saying "we should never forget this place and what went on here, so we can learn from it and make sure it never happens again"Read more