Journey into the Land of the Zeks and Back

A Memoir of the Gulag

Julius Margolin, Translated by Stefani Hoffman, Foreword by Timothy Snyder, and Introduction by Katherine R. Jolluck

  • The first full English translation of a masterful Gulag memoir that preceded Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago by decades.
  • An established classic in the Russian-speaking world that influenced the writing of Gulag memoirs after its first publication in French in 1949 and in Russian (in the United States) in 1952.
  • A moving, highly readable, ironic account of the Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland, life in the Gulag system, and the eventual return to the West of a survivor.
  • Features a foreword by Timothy Snyder and introduction by Katherine R. Jolluck.

Under the Soviet regime, millions of zeks (prisoners) were incarcerated in the forced labor camps, the Gulag. There many died of starvation, disease, and exhaustion, and some were killed by criminals and camp guards. In 1939, as the Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland, many Polish citizens found themselves swept up by the Soviet occupation and sent into the Gulag. One such victim was Julius Margolin, a Pinsk-born Jewish philosopher and writer living in Palestine who was in Poland on family matters.

Author: Aisseco

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