Roland Bude: The German whom the Soviets sentenced for a quarter century for not being willing to denounce anybody
- Keywords: Interrogations / frost / rebellion in the camp / amnesty / Germans in the Gulag
He was of the kind often referred to as Homo politicus. He kept public affairs in mind even when dancing with girls as a student. If a girl piqued his interest, he would invite her – not to a date but to a meeting. He would canvass them to join a youth organisation he was active with.
Many found his commitment impressive, but the communist secret police in East Germany were so irritated that they decided to stop Roland Bude. Even though he never breached a single provision of the law, they arrested him and threw him to the Soviets. They tortured him until he broke. When he gave in to the brutal pressure and ‘confessed’ to being a spy, they sent him to a Siberian camp for a quarter century.
Gertrud Platais: She sought a better life in the Soviet Union, but fell prey to political repressions instead
- Keywords: Germans in the Gulag / deportation / Kazakhstan / frost / hunger / solitary confinement / women’s camp / ALZHIR
A foreigner who was seeking a better life in the Soviet Union fell victim to political repressions, instead finding cruelty and inhumanity in her new homeland. She survived the hell of the Soviet camps. She could not have made it alone, however. She found some surprising allies in the inhospitable barren land, thousands of miles away from home. Selfless help she received from strangers at a pivotal point in her life saved her and restored her will to live.
Gertrud Platais was born in a German family in Lower Silesia in today’s Poland on 24 August 1910. In 1925, she started a four-year apprenticeship in lithography at the local applied art school in Breslau (Wroclaw). Having graduated, the young woman met a man who changed her life forever, Karl Eduard Platais. They got married and started planning their future far away from their home.