Vladimir Djack Story

(Don't miss out this powerful true story!)

We have it in English, Russian and Ukrainian.

Vladimir Djack was a Russian prisoner in the Gulag! God saved him and delivered him. Now he is in full time prison ministry with International Prison Ministry. Share this book with every member of your family.



PREVIEW OF THE BOOK



ENROUTE

TO HELL

"Get up! Get up!" My dream was broken up by a youngster's shout. A young soldier was running alongside the carriage, hitting the sleeping convicts with a rod.

My heavy dreams went away. Again I could see Stolypin, a long,dark,stinking coach for carrying convicts. I could hear the clatter of wheels and think of the eternity of my forthcoming imprisonment.

We were being brought to the Autonomic Republic of Komi -- a republic of prisons and concentration camps. It was one of the most awful places in the North of Russia. The young soldier was walking back, hitting now and then those who were not in a hurry to open their eyes. A senior escort with two armed soldiers entered the carriage, shouting angrily, "Attention! We have crossed the border of the Komi Respublic. There are no Soviet power laws here. Here is a rule: "the taiga* is the law, the bear is the master".No other authority exists here! One step aside is considered to be an escape. You will be shot without warning. That's it."

We felt bored and frightened.

As the location of my imprisonment came nearer and nearer, the clatter of wheels seemed to get louder and louder.

Finally, we arrived in Mickung. We left the carriage and saw only a snowy desert all around us. We were surrounded by an officer with a platoon of newly called soldiers. I understand we were their first group of prisoners and that was why their faces were boyish and strained. One nearby bore a grimace of severity on his face, nervously fingering the trigger of his sub--machine-gun. They seemed so frightened they could open fire without the slightest hesitation. That might be the prisoner's end. The report would read, "Killed in an attempt to escape."

"Get down!" a short command sounded abruptly. We fell down to solid snow and remained there for an hour or so. In spite of frost, the snow began to melt beneath us.

Within two hours we found ourselves in snow pits with icy walls surrounding us. Our clothes turned into icy shells that cracked when the convicts began to stand up after the "Get up! Line up!" command. It was our first lesson that Komi was not Russia! It was quite evident that the Soviet power was nowhere there.

Mickung appeared not to be the point of destination but an intermediate prison where we spent a few days. The prison was filthy and stinking. More than a hundred convicts lived in each cell. We couldn't have a drink of water for the entire day.

Late at night, the door was opened, and somebody's hand placed a bucket of water in the cell, with a metal mug wired to it. The prisoners began to drink eagerly, taking several large sips. Those who took the first sips cried indignantly, "What trash! What garbage!" But new prisoners continued to snatch the mug out of hands to take a sip. When it came my turn at the bucket, a nearly round face with slanted eyes peered in and asked in poor Russian, "Is the water good? We have just washed the cell and corridor with it." Unable to keep my cool, I splashed the garbage in the soldier's face. Moments later, several soldiers rushed in and we were badly beaten.

Thus, the second lesson of lawlessness was taught to us. No place for human dignity existed here. It had remained somewhere in Russia. There the abnormality of Lenin's "socialist system" was somehow camouflaged by the revolutionary holiday and colors, cheap drinks, illusionary well-being. In prisons, the system demonstrated itself with all its ruthlessness. Petty, hardly educated people, who have been given limitless power, exercised it cruelly to humiliate a man as much as possible
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Created by Serge Taran.
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Revised: September 11, 1999.