Torn Out by the Roots: The Recollections of a Former Communist - Hardcover

Vitzthum, Hilda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803246609 ISBN 13: 9780803246607

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1993

Synopsis

"The enemies of the people must be torn out by the roots," read a sign Hilda Vitzthum observed in a public building shortly before her arrest in 1938. Her husband, a Russian engineer employed in the construction of a huge steelworks in western Siberia, was an "enemy of the people," a member of the educated classes that Stalin saw as a threat to his regime. Not only would he be a victim of Stalin’s madness; his whole family must be destroyed. Even though Hilda was an Austrian and, like her husband, a loyal Communist, her children were taken from her and she was condemned to forced labor.

Torn Out by the Roots is Hilda Vitzthum’s chilling reminiscence of her nearly ten years in Soviet labor camps—of privations and horrors of overwhelming enormity, mitigated by occasional kindness and humanity. It is a harrowing and moving story, all the more so for its simplicity and matter-of-factness.

Although Hilda Vitzthum was allowed to return to Austria in 1948, she could not write about her experiences until the 1980s. Before then, she says, "no one would have believed me if I had told the unvarnished truth." The dissolution of the Soviet Union compels us to record, so none may forget, the human cost of the Stalinist experiment.

About this title

About the Author

The translator, Paul Schach, is a professor emeritus of Germanic languages at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a distinguished scholar who has published widely.

Reviews

Vitzthum writes with uncanny poise about her 10 years of torment in Stalin's labor camps. An Austrian nurse, born in 1902, she joined the Austrian Communist party, which sent her to Moscow in 1929. Marrying a Russian engineer who shared her faith in Communism, she accompanied him to Siberia, where he helped build a steelworks. Her husband, falsely branded "an enemy of the people" by Stalin, disappeared forever into the gulag. Wrenched from her son in 1938, Vitzthum was hauled from one remote labor camp to another in unheated cattle cars. Her work as a nurse in the camps allowed her to feel human. Finally released and reunited with her son, she returned to Vienna. This moving, remarkably vivid memoir provides a woman's unflinching perspective on the Soviet Gulag, a grotesque hell where new mothers were forced to give up their babies to camp nurseries.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Tales of Stalin's labor camps are legion, but the recent breakup of the Soviet Union may renew interest in their history. Originally published in Germany in 1984, this spare account by an Austrian-born member of the Communist Party tells of her eight years in labor camps, Where she was solely because her Russian husband had been found guilty of treason. Since she had been trained as a nurse, Vitzthum was usually spared the worst hard labor--cutting trees in the forest--to work in the camp infirmary, where she saw the worst consequences of prolonged hard labor. Despite the unremitting suffering around her and the inherent absurdity of her situation, Vitzthum found frequent solace in the natural beauty of her world and in the kindnesses of others who refused to be brutalized by their experiences. This simple tale of survival makes a powerful and lasting impression.
- Marcia L. Sprules, Council of Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803246609
• ISBN 13: 9780803246607
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 273