Today’s Unsanitary Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Not without reason is Novosibirsk called the “Capital of Siberia”. As of 1982, fifteen concentration camps and four prisons provided sufficient grounds for calling it a “capital”. Here are a few “highlights” of the area.
Siberian prison camp, 2001.
In the city’s Dzerzhinskii District is a pre-trial detention prison in which 3000 inmates are waiting for their day in court and subsequent transferal to a camp. The prison is always full, though the actual number of inmates incarcerated here varies. Twenty prisoners are confined to a cell, thus allowing 1.5 square meters per person. The cells contain double-level plank-beds; mattresses and linen are not provided. The cells are dirty and infested with lice. The prison also accommodates four death cells. Executions are carried out by firing squads.
In Dzerzhinskii District in the northern part of the city, about 1000 prisoners from camp no. 98/8, a strict-regime facility, are assigned to work in two nuclear warhead plants, innocuously designated as “Chimkontsentrat” and “Chimapparat”. The high level of radioactivity emanating from the plants renders dangerous any visit to the immediate vicinity.
Camp no. 91/10 is a hospital where sick prisoners or prisoners completely exhausted from their backbreaking work are delivered. O.Z., an eyewitness, reports: “I arrived at the camp hospital on Gusinobrodskoe Highway without having had any camp experience before, and I thought the place was an inferno. The hospital wards—barracks, in effect—were packed with sick people. It was cold and damp everywhere. A stench emanated from the overfilled rooms. The thug-like hospital attendants lived off the rations of the patients, to whom the physicians in turn paid no attention. I was brought into the surgery ward, as I was suffering from acute appendicitis. Immediately following the operation, I was sent out with some other patients to work in the courtyard or in the kitchen. We were also made to tidy up the operating room and clean the surgical instruments. I was shocked by the sanitary conditions. Several of the forceps, for example, were rusted. In the evening, we were assigned to sharpen the hypodermic needles systematically with a hone. I witnessed dozens of cases in this ‘hospital’ of desperate prisoners driven to self-mutilation by the brutal working conditions in the logging camps. Instances of prisoners who had chopped off a finger, swallowed a nail, or stitched a dirty thread through the flesh of an arm or leg were common. These prisoners, however, were never treated. The doctors’ response was, ‘You messed yourself up, now you can go rot to death for it.’”
Culled from: The First Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration Camps of the Soviet Union
Garretdom: Scarce Locals Edition
Culled from the Prairie Schooner, Marshall, Minnesota, September 13, 1873:
Somebody’s child living out here on somebody’s farm had a finger cut off the other day, but we are unable to learn names and their particulars. Hope it is done aching by this time. If anybody else will cut off a finger we will lend them a good sharp knife, will pay for having it (the finger) sewed on, and will give a good square notice of the affair in the Schooner. Locals [local news items] are scarce and getting scarcer.
Culled from: Coffee Made Her Insane
More weird olde news can be found at Garretdom.