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But Cilka also began to tend to the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under brutal conditions. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, Kellyanne Conway and husband George SPLIT after 22 years following admission in her 2022 memoir that her husband's criticism of Trump was a betrayal, Where IS Gavin? . However, Morris is clear that Lale Sokolov and other survivors from Auschwitz-Birkenau spoke of the relationship between Cilka and Schwarzhuber. Some of the well known facts from the life of Cilka Klein have to be mentioned here and we should consider whether an author is actually entitled to write a person's biography without knowing their true story. For example, in the Radzilow article, Volunteer Marek defended the claim that Jewish militiamen helped to send Polish families into exile.. Cilkas Journey : The sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz . As Ive said to them numerous times, I am not interested in any money for myself and I will not accept any money for this misbegotten project., The Slovakian writer Peter Juscak interviewed Kovachova about her experiences, and said he met Morris twice when she was researching the novel: At the second meeting I warned her that she did not know the story of Cilka and her writing would be problematic. When the camp was liberated by . Though Icewhiz has earned a bad reputation on Wikipedia, due to his combative personal style and aggressively pro-Israel position, his claims of an encyclopedic conspiracy are not unfounded: In 2009, WikiLeaks (which is not connected to Wikipedia) released a batch of emails revealing the existence of a group of Wikipedia editors from Eastern European nations that were coordinating their actions and working together to skew content there to push a nationalistic line. In 1942 Cilka Klein is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. An Australian author is under fire for allegedly misinterpreting the experiences of a Holocaust survivor in her latest book. Heather Morris, the best-selling author of "The Tattooist of Auschwitz," has written another powerful book, "Cilka's Journey," based on the life of Cecilia "Cilka" Klein, who lived through the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust. But after hearing her read extracts, he told her publishers that the novel might infringe on his rights. If you ask Icewhiz, its because they have built strong allies on Wikipedia that currently make them immune to criticism. Kovach told the blogger Danny Bloom that his father was arrested in Czechoslovakia in 1948. It was very clear that the situation for the women, every woman except for those old and sick, was dire. The effort to rewrite Polish history on Wikipedia joins Holocaust distortion efforts by Polish think tanks picked up and echoed by nationalist media outlets that try to increase the estimate of the number of Poles who perished during the so-called Polocaust, a term that has gained popularity in recent years and is used to describe the mass murder of non-Jewish Poles at the hands of the Nazis. By Dr. Terry Segal October 30, 2019, 11:01 am. It is exactly these kinds of claims that have turned many in the Wikipedia community against Icewhiz. Se salv de morir de hambre, enfermedad o en las cmaras de gas, pero, tras la liberacin, fue acusada de colaboradora y espa ante la NKVD . At the very least, he is urging her publisher St Martins Press to make more clear that the work does not represent what actually happened and to urge readers to read Primo Levi and actual accounts of Auschwitz. Entdecke Neu! He and his mother escaped to the west, and he didnt see his father again until he was an adult, when he also met Kovachova and learned of her story. In his defense, Pitorus said that the edits were not an attempt to push out falsehoods, but rather only to shine light on the topic of Polish rescue of Jews, which he said were under-researched and even ignored by the likes of Yad Vashem. His stepmother, who later worked as a senior government accountant, had a reputation in Slovakia for incorruptibility. Having a respected newspaper vet his claims and publish the story of the hoax plays a key role in his attempt to defend history. He urged people not to buy the new sequel (Cilkas Journey) to her global bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and instead to read real Holocaust history, reports the British paper The Guardian today (article below). I have not included the name of the man she (Cilka) met in Vorkuta and married, in order to protect the privacy of his descendants, Morris writes in an afterword. A famous example of Polish violence against Jews is the July 1941 pogrom at Radzilow. We pay for your stories! Like her debut, which topped bestseller lists around the world, it is a work of fiction based on a real life. In German the error was quickly weeded out. Another alleged misinformation mentioned by Kovach's lawyer in a letter to St Martin's Press last month included the suggestion that Klein stole drugs from the gulag's hospital. For example, though the article was translated into 12 languages, it never made its way into Hebrew, where the camp is only noted in passing as part the article for the Warsaw Ghetto. Pitorus, who agreed to speak with Haaretz, denied Icewhizs allegations of a group effort. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival. The book's blurring of truth and fiction has caused anger from the real-life Holocaust survivor's family. By French family sues Airbnb after 19-month-old daughter dies from fentanyl overdose while taking a nap at Miami rental - after previous tenants held cocaine-fueled party, Walgreens says it will NOT sell abortion pills in 20 Republican-controlled states - even where it is still legal. Cilka Klein, along with her family, was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau when she was just sixteen years old. All Rights Reserved. "The bravest person": Cecilia (Cilka) Klein, above left, the Slovak Jewish woman who survived Auschwitz, only to be sent to a Soviet gulag, with husband Ivan, stepson George Kovach, his wife and child, in Budapest in 1984. . He presented his findings to Wikipedias top arbitration body and the Polish editors were given a chance to defend their claims. The first time was in 2006, as part of what can only be termed a Polish cleansing of the text. Holocaust revisionism in Wikipedia deserves to be studied in its own right. I have written Lales story.. The electronic spies lurking in our pockets are now justice's greatest tools, Alex Murdaugh is seen with his prison buzz cut as he starts two life sentences without parole for killing his wife Maggie and son: Judge says they will 'visit you in your sleep' - as his lawyers plan appeal in ten days, Is Murdaugh family behind three other mysterious deaths? He would wag his finger and tell me she was the bravest person, not the bravest girl, but the bravest person, hed ever met, says author Heather Morris, whose novelisation of Lales life story last year became a three-million-selling book. 09/30/2019. This group, he claims, is comprised of Polish expatriates who have embraced a nationalistic position that is far to the right of the Polish mainstream. The most important was the prison inside the ghetto, which played a role in the putting down of the Warsaw uprising.. . Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Ken Bruce finishes his 30-year tenure as host of BBC Radio 2, Ukrainian soldier takes out five tanks with Javelin missiles, Family of a 10-month-old baby filmed vaping open up, Missing hiker buried under snow forces arm out to wave to helicopter, Hershey's Canada releases HER for SHE bars featuring a trans activist, Moment teenager crashes into back of lorry after 100mph police race. The decision, said one editor with knowledge of the debate behind it, all but gives the Polish revisionists free rein on English Wikipedia. Cilka Klein is 18 years old when Auschwitz-Birkenau is liberated by Soviet soldiers. Morris did not present Kovach with a manuscript and instead read him some excerpts which also mentioned his deceased father. Trump wants 'Freedom Cities' where cars can fly, parents get 'BONUSES' for having babies and huge monuments are built to 'true American heroes' in 'Quantum Leap' vision for the future, US soldier is sentenced to 45 years in jail for conspiring with Satanic neo-Nazi group to launch jihadi massacre on his OWN platoon as it guarded secret military site, Tom Sizemore, 61, dies after aneurysm and stroke: Action star known for Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down and Born on the Fourth of July battled addiction, Floridians are told not to wash their face with tap water over brain-eating bug fears: Public health experts issue warning after man died from amoeba-infested water. She was just a girl, a teenager, who lived through two of the most evil periods in history and became a spoil of war,' the author told Event magazine earlier this year. For example, the first version of the article claimed that per various estimates, some 200,000 people were killed there by the Germans during the war., This is completely absurd, explains Prof. Dreifuss, who is the head of Yad Vashems Center for Research on the Holocaust in Poland. In the book, Ivan is replaced by the character of Alexandr with whom she similarly falls in love while in Soviet hands. Just a few weeks ago, for example, an editor whose username is usually a variation of Molobo, and was banned in the wake of the scandal, tried to edit the article for the Warsaw concentration camp. Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Mom who lost both sons to fentanyl blasts laughing Biden, Moment teenager crashes into back of lorry after 100mph police race, Two Russian tanks annihilated with bombs by Ukrainian armed forces, Bizarre moments in Alex Murdaugh double murder trial so far, Stolen car crashes into another car causing building to collapse, Ukrainian soldier takes out five tanks with Javelin missiles. Cilka is based on Cecilia Kovachova, a real-life woman who survived Auschwitz only to be imprisoned in a Soviet gulag where, in the new novel, she enters a sexual relationship with another SS commander and steals drugs from the gulag hospital. The Commandant at birkenau, schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. One of Wikipedias three core principles is verifiability. It requires that every factual claim be attributed to a reputable source that can be verified independently. We are introduced to Cecilia 'Cilka' Klein in the No.1 Bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz (2018) where Lale Sokolov mentions her as the bravest person he ever met. The claim was attributed to a press release from the IPN, which in turn quoted the Association of the Committee for the Construction of the Monument to the Victims of the KL Warschau Extermination Camp, a local group that is a proponent of Trzcinskas book the same dubious source repackaged as a legitimate reference. In addition to adding the inflated Warsaw death toll, the editor also deleted a line explaining that, the primary intention of these camps was the extermination of the Jews. The revision highlights how the attempt to push out the false narrative regarding KL Warschau goes hand in hand with attempts to minimize the Jewish Holocaust and exaggerate the so-called Polocaust. In their ruling, the panel members accepted the Polish editors claims and said Icewhizs use of terms such as Polocaust and Polophile were ethnically derogatory. As a result of their decision, henceforth, any attempt by one editor to label another editor or source as revisionist or anti-Semitic can be considered a form of hate speech on Wikipedia. 'Cilkas Journey is a work of fiction, and it is based on the memories of survivors who knew Cilka at the time these events are described, in particular, Lali Sokolov, the Tattooist of Auschwitz, who regarded Cilka as ''the bravest person'' he had ever met. The publisher said Morris was a regular donor to many charities, and that conversations about making donations to the charities suggested by Kovach were ongoing and under consideration. Not only that, her findings, which she published independently in 2002, were completely debunked by two historians appointed by the IPN. El viaje de Cilka es una historia basada en un personaje de la vida real que ya se nos presenta en el libro El Tatuador de Auschwitz, del que ya hice resea en este blog. Now, the Wikipedia community the same one that is shunning Icewhiz must decide on another question: Will it recognize the debunked version of KL Warschau as the longest-standing hoax in Wikipedias history. Slovakian Jewish boys and girls, young men and women, were the first European Jews transported to Auschwitz in 1942. Exclusive. However, the article Tylman wrote, with the help of some IPN sources, claimed that these Jews were in fact killed by Nazi Einsatzgruppen paramilitary forces. Heather Morris's novel "Cilka's Journey" is a fictionalized story of a real young woman, aged 16 when initially arrested, who endured unbelievable treatment in two of the worlds worst camps for nothing more than being a Jew. During our meeting in 2003, after the death of her husband Ivan, she showed them to me with the words: "You are the first person . There is some debate over the actual death toll at KL Warschau (anywhere between 4,000 and 20,000). An examination of his claims by Haaretz reveals the existence of what seems to be a systematic effort by Polish nationalists to whitewash hundreds of Wikipedia articles relating to Poland and the Holocaust. According to the author, on liberation, and still only 19, Cilka was charged by the Russians as a collaborator. Although this a sequel to that book it can easily be read as a standalone story. Despite these claims, Wikipedia reveals that aided by the likes of other editors from the group, like Volunteer Marek, some members of the group are also active in downplaying Polish violence against Jews and in some cases have even accused the Jews of violence against Poles. It was the characterisation of my stepmother in Tattooist as the sex slave of SS-Obersturmfhrer Schwarzhuber that appalled me. It was the characterisation of my stepmother in Tattooist as the sex slave of SS-Obersturmfhrer Schwarzhuber that appalled me. Australian author Heather Morris tried to track the real-life Kovachova down when researching her book Cilka's Journey, but the Holocaust survivor died in 2004. Morriss global bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a novel based on the story of the Slovakian Jew Lale Sokolov, who told Morris how he fell in love with a woman he tattooed while he was in the concentration camp. Cilka, based on the real life of Ceclia Kovov, was a character in The Tattooist of Auschwitz; in the novel, Cilka was 16 in 1942 when she entered Auschwitz, where she was forced to become . The current attempt to invent slaughters and victims that never took place is a horrible thing that may actually undermine the real history of the vicious persecution Poles suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany. Cilka worked in the gulag hospital, a safer job than the hard labour performed by most of the women outdoors. The comments below have been moderated in advance. Con solo diecisis aos, la prisionera juda Cilka Klein fue convertida en la concubina de uno . Judging by the battle over Holocaust history, it is very likely that the existence of this hoax too will be struck from the annals of Wikipedias history. The number 200,000 is significant in the context, both scholars explain. She cannot protect herself, nor can her husband, my father, who is dead. Cilka's Journey . Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilkas Journey. In the beginning of 1990s, a new narrative was being pushed out by nationalists that there was an extermination camp in Warsaw and that there were gas chambers there. In Cilka's Journey, we are introduced to Cilka Klein, who first appeared in the bestselling The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz would remember another character, Cilka Klein, who was only 16 when she entered Auschwitz, saving Lale's life. George Kovach also called Heather Morriss Cilkas Journey, which is based on his stepmother Cecilias life, appalling and extremely hurtful, By Alison Flood Even though the IPN had already debunked her claims, they were misrepresented on Wikipedia to be said to support her theory that a considerable amount of Zyklon B was found there. Through an array of inline references in Polish, and vague attribution to Trzcinskas book and with the help of Polish editors, who presented her as a bona fide historian the number spread through the encyclopedia. Last year, Morris told fans on her Facebook page that it would be obvious what parts of her story are factual and said she had made two trips to Slovakia to meet several people who knew Cilka and her husband. 'Given the number of factual errors, this book cannot be recommended as a valuable title for persons who want to explore and understand the history of Auschwitz concentration camp,' wrote Auschwitz researcherWanda Witek-Malicka. She is preceded in death by her loving husband of 65 years, Donald Klein, sisters, Mary DiLaura, Lena (Dominic) Cutitta; brothers, Thomas . 'She was in the Holocaust, she was in Auschwitz, she spent nine years in a gulag, and now to have her reputation and her life dragged through the mud, I just find that appalling. One of the revisionists bitterest enemies on this point is Jan Grabowski, whose research has focused on the hunt for Jews by local Poles during the later stage of the Nazi occupation. The novel begins with the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops in 1945. According to his website, Tylman, who declined to be interviewed for this story, was born in Poland but lives in Canada where he works as an artist and poet. But unfortunately, his stepmother's portrayal remained unchanged. He and his mother escaped to the west, and he didnt see his father again until he was an adult, when he also met Kovachova and learned of her story. There is mounting evidence that families are forced to take their children out of public schools and to enroll them in Jewish day schools due to a growing sense of insecurity and fear that their kids will be harmed simply because of who they are, The Age reported. 'The book contains numerous errors and information inconsistent with the facts, as well as exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements on which the overall inauthentic picture of the camp reality is built.'. Cecilia Kleinov, ne Rothmannov, was born in October 1928 in Porbka, a small village in the Sobranka district of Eastern Slovakia. Moreover, they accused the Israeli editor of harassing them on Wikipedia, claiming he was driven by hatred of Poland and Poles. But Morriss blend of fiction and fact has troubled some particularly the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre, which published a lengthy report clarifying the known facts about events in the book last December, saying the novel contained numerous errors and information inconsistent with the facts, as well as exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements and described it as an impression about Auschwitz inspired by authentic events, almost without any value as a document. The book made it clear that it was a fictionalized account and having a partner who is a documentary film editor, one persons truth is often not another. An Australian author is under fire for allegedly misinterpreting the experiences of a Holocaust survivor in her latest book. I am devastated. Still, Kovach wants a more explicit statement about its fictionalization, an apology from Morris and her publisher, and 10% of revenue to be donated to an appropriate charity nothing for himself. Documentaries are not always what they seem either. Cilka Klein endured ten years of horrendous conditions and sexual abuse during her time at Auschwitz Credit: Getty - Contributor. This so-called Eastern European Mailing List (EEML) scandal shook Wikipedia and earned bans for all those involved with it. Though the historical truth is that Poles were behind the killing of more than 300 Jews, in Poeticbents falsified version, it was claimed that the Nazis used similar methods in Radzilow as they did Jedwabne an indirect denial of Polish complicity in both massacres. The fact that it was a Polish editor who first wrote the article and included the falsehood, as well as the fact that it included the claim that the evidence that would establish the truth of the camp was destroyed, are part of what Grabowski calls the competing victimology of the Polish right. It was very clear that it was a novel based on truth and I believe the incidents described are true. This attempt to revise the accepted history of the Shoah on the internet encyclopedia parrots the revised historical narrative currently being trumpeted by the Polish government. Its fake history, says Prof. Havi Dreifuss, a Tel Aviv University historian and Yad Vashems expert on Poland and the Holocaust, when asked about gas chambers in Warsaw. In the book, Morris mentioned that Klein had been liberated by Russian forces and sentenced to multiple years in a forced labour camp for sleeping with the enemy but a letterto the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany contradicted this information. Ten per cent of the revenues should be donated to the Solzhenitsyn Fund or the Russian gulag organisation Memorial, he continued. She was just a girl, a teenager, who lived through two of the most evil periods in history and became a spoil of war. But Cilka is one of the many women who is sentenced to a labor camp on charges of having helped the Nazis-with no consideration of the circumstances Cilka and women like her found themselves in as they struggled to survive. Based on the heart-breaking true story of Cilka Klein, Cilka's Journey is a million copy international bestseller and the sequel to the No.1 bestselling phenomenon, The Tattooist of Auschwitz 'She was the bravest person I ever met' Lale Sokolov, The Tattooist of Auschwitz In 1942 Cilka Klein is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. Readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz would remember another character, Cilka Klein, who was only 16 when she entered Auschwitz, saving Lale's life. She was eventually released in the 1950s, when Stalin's successor Nikita Khrushchev was trying to dismantle the former dictator's legacy. The Tattooist of Auschwitz attacked as inauthentic by camp memorial centre, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. New Zealand born Morris uses the fictional character of Cilka Klein to portray Cecilia's miraculous survival, vividly portraying her as the sex slave of two SS commanders in Auschwitz. Australian author Heather Morrisis under fire for allegedly misinterpreting the experiences of a Holocaust survivor in her latest book. For example, she continues, in the [English] article on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the fighting forces [that battled the Germans] are misrepresented in the info box on the side. KL Warschau was actually a collection of a few places of internment spread out over the city. Harry's chat with guru who compared Hamas terrorists to Jews who battled the Nazis has appalled Rabbis: What DOES Duke know about man who defended anti-Semites, called for ALL drugs to be legal and who will want intimate detail of his upbringing? Based on the heartbreaking true story of Cilka Klein, Cilka's Journey is a million copy international bestseller and the sequel to the No.1 bestselling phenomenon, The Tattooist of Auschwitz . Since the rise of the Polish Law and Justice partys right-wing government in Poland in 2005, this type of Polocaust revisionism has emerged from the shadows to become the law of the land. A female doctor, called Yelena in the book, protected her by training her as a nurse . Most of the examples in this story are taken from Icewhizs increasingly quixotic battle against the group of Polish editors. Now Morriss sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilkas Journey, has been denounced by George Kovach, stepson of Cecilia Kovachova, upon whose story the novel is based. I am angry and it's just very hurtful,' Mr Kovach toldThe Weekend Australian. Christian Davies, the Warsaw correspondent for the British paper The Guardian, has also exposed the myth of the gas chambers for Polish Christians in Warsaw in a recent article in The London Review of Books. Cilka's Journey is the million copy bestselling sequel to the phenomenon The Tattooist of Auschwitz. She was born August 3, 1926 in Batavia, to the late Angelo (Angeline Tizzano) DiLaura. Heather Morris chose to tell Cilkas story because it highlights the sexual abuse that women suffered during World War II and its aftermath, abuse that has gone unacknowledged for too long,' the statement read. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides - A woman shoots her husband and then never speaks another word. To keep her on hand, he gave her a privileged job, as warden of a death block for women condemned to the gas chambers. Since the Wikipedia article on the Warsaw concentration camp was opened in August 2004, and until it was completely rewritten this past August, it falsely claimed that there was an extermination camp in the Polish capital. By piggybacking on a real camp and inflating a real death toll, those peddling the KL Warschau conspiracy theory managed to pass Wikipedias first muster. What I would like is for them [Heather Morris and St Martins Press] to publicise that this work is 99% fiction and to apologise for the treatment of my stepmother, he said. But thats not true, the uprising was the result of Jewish actions and the Jewish organizations led the fighting, while Polish groups played an extremely marginal role. While it has been inspired by what Heather Morris has discovered about Cilka, it is fiction, not a biography or an authoritative record of historical events. We use cookies to give you the best possible experience. Cilka Klein endured ten years of horrendous conditions and sexual abuse during her time at Auschwitz Credit: Getty - Contributor. However, it was never proven and in fact, Trzcinskas work was never published by the body that employed her or the one that took its place after the fall of the communist regime: Polands Institute of National Remembrance, also known as the IPN. I have not included the name of the man she (Cilka) met in Vorkuta and married, in order to protect the privacy of his descendants, Morris writes in an afterword. That is the terrible story of Cilka Klein, the teenage girl whose shocking adventures novel the New Zealand writer Heather Morris in 'Cilka's Journey'(Espasa).It is, in a way, the continuation of 'The tattoo artist of Auschwitz', one of the greatest editorial successes of recent years, and with which Morris aspires to repeat bombshell. However, his own personal vendetta against them has lost him the upper hand. This book is, I hope, about the transference of that shame. But Cilka is one of the many women who is sentenced to a labor camp on charges of having helped the Naziswith no . Cilka would have needed official citizenship to be able to work in the Communist state of Czechoslovakia, now a satellite of the USSR and behind the iron curtain, and to marry. I never stopped telling stories, or as my husband called them - long-winded tales. Cilka's adoptive son went as far as to threaten legal action against Heather: . The book was marketed as being based on a true story and relied heavily on information Morris claimed she learned from Klein's life including her supposed liberation from Auschwitz. . Although it weaves together facts and reportage with the experiences of women survivors of the Holocaust, and the experiences of women sent to the Soviet Gulag system at the end of the second world war, it is a novel and does not represent the entire facts of Cilkas life, she adds, ending with the hope that further details about Cilka and those who once knew her will continue to come to light once the book is published. According to Harari, Cecilia (Cilka) Klein, who died in 2004, was 16 when sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in World War II. I can honestly say that the contents of the book did not diminish my respect for that character. In another case that shows how Trzcinskas work supplied revisionists with the citations they needed, an editor called Poeticbent insinuated the 200,000 death toll figure from the Warsaw article to the one about Nazi crimes against the Polish nation. In the stirring follow-up to The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Morris tells the story of a woman who survives Auschwitz, only to find herself locked away again.Cilka Klein is 18 years old when Auschwitz-Birkenau is liberated by Soviet soldiers. Kovachs father, Ivan Kovach, met Kovachova when they were prisoners in the Vorkuta gulag in northern Russia. What I would like is for them [Heather Morris and St Martins Press] to publicise that this work is 99% fiction and to apologise for the treatment of my stepmother, he said. Pitorus, a member of the group, wrote about the need to develop a plan to create fake users to help gain votes and manipulate internal elections to get themselves elected to key positions within Wikipedias oversight mechanisms. Within thirty minutes, they were separated. After hearing excerpts from the manuscript of Cilkas Journey and reading The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Kovach told the Guardian, I decided not to be associated with this project in any way. On the article on German camps in occupied Poland during World War II, for example, false information relating to the camp remained online for almost 13 years. 'There's still people in Slovakia who knew my stepmother, who loved my stepmother, and for them to pick up this book that says it is a true story, and then to read about this woman who (supposedly) stole drugs in the gulag, who slept with camp commandants, it's terrible,' he said.