orced labor served an economy that supplied the Wehrmacht. We might be tempted to think of this as ironic; for Margolin it was simply the end of his world: “Both sides were inhuman reflections of everything we held dear and sacred.” There was nothing surprising, for him, in “Russia’s alliance with Nazi Germany.” A Jew in Soviet confinement, he had to endure pro-Nazi propaganda: “The rare Soviet newspapers that landed in the camp were full of pro-German publicity.” The Soviet press was reprinting the speeches of Nazi dignitaries. “In line with Hitler’s successes,” Margolin recalls, “antisemitism increased in the camp.” Although he was a Polish Jew, and well aware of Polish antisemitism, no one called him a kike until he was in a Soviet camp.
As to the question of whether the real Russia is the one that celebrates victory over Nazi Germany on Red Square or the one that exists in the uncharted universe of concentration camps that formed the gulag, there's little doubt which answer Margolin – and Snyder – would give.
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