| Summary: |
Divided into three parts, this book consists of a free translation from
German into English of Neufeld’s most important writings. The parts
refl ect the great variety of Neufeld’s life, his changing self-awareness, the
astonishing range of his writings, and the monumental events through
which he had lived. The fi rst part, “My Path of Thorns,†is a distinguished,
previously unpublished memoir of Neufeld’s interrogation and his fi ve
years of hard labour in the gulag. 16 From 1933–9, Neufeld was a gulag
inmate, fi rst in an eastern camp double-tracking the Trans Siberian
railway and then, improbably, as manager of an NKVD experimental
pig farm in the subpolar European north. Neufeld was one of a disproportionately
large number of Mennonites torn from their families
in tightly knit, religious, Low German-speaking villages and plunged
into a strangely unfamiliar Russian-speaking gulag world. Camp life
was marked by arbitrary rules, rampant criminality, hunger, untreated
maladies, insuperable work norms, brutality, and crass dehumanization.
Above all, camp life demanded acquiescence in a camp morality
of bogus production fi gures and an anything-goes mindset that shook
Neufeld to his core. According to a camp saying approvingly quoted by
Neufeld, the gulag rested on foundations of “cursing, connections, and
bullshit ( mat, blat i tuô€„ž a ).â€
Wri􀄴 en with verve and consummate skill, this memoir brings to life
the distinguishing features and atmosphere of the gulag during the relatively
poor-documented mid-years of its existence, from 1933–9. With
candour it documents the muddled state of much of the gulag’s organization
at the time and the impossible moral dilemmas that confronted
inmates on a daily basis. A treasury also of Mennonite piety, it captures
Neufeld’s struggle with his identity and faith in a world of unbounded
evil that off ered few moral options. Illuminating of the life of the gulag
and of one of its smallest but best-known ethno-religious minorities,
Neufeld’s memoir, with its fresh images, deep understanding, and
powerful emotions, merits inclusion with signifi cant camp memoirs in
the broader literature.
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