Watch Jan Plovajko’s whole story

Every camp had connected activities and services that were carried out either by free employees or by prisoners with relative freedom that had permission to move about without armed supervision. Here we see a store located outside a camp, opposite the main gate.

Dead Road prisoner Alexander Snovsky describes his first free movement outside camp grounds: “I went out of the zone. On the left stood a settlement for free employees and the guards’ barracks. In front of me there was an electric power station. To the right, at an elevation, was a barn. I went to the power station where two dirty, noisy motors were being used – workers in greasy clothes were pouring motor oil into them. I went to look at the horses at the stables and longed to work with them, to get a job with them and exceed the quota and so shorten my sentence. I went to the brigadier, got a horse and became a coach driver, doing logging.”