Published February 2, 2001
Magadan parish reaches out to survivors of Stalin labor camps
MAGADAN, Russia — Branislava Klemavitchute was preparing to celebrate the feast of St. Anthony in 1947 when Soviet police arrested her as an "enemy of the people." But the 18-year-old Lithuanian refused to give up her faith.
She prayed in secret with other believers and even made a tiny rosary out of bread, which she kept sewed into her prison uniform while serving eight years of hard labor.
Olga Gureyiva, an Eastern-rite Catholic, was arrested in 1944, supposedly for being part of a Ukrainian nationalist movement. She was beaten and tortured before being sentenced to 11 years of prison labor, which she performed in five different camps in eastern Russia.
The faith kept her alive, she said last month.
Now Klemavitchute and Gureyiva are members of Nativity of Jesus Parish in Magadan, the first Catholic church ever in this city halfway up Russia’s east coast. Inspired by their stories, the parish is reaching out to the 300 or so people in Magadan who lived through Joseph Stalin’s notorious labor camps. An estimated 2 million prisoners died in the Magadan region.
Nativity pastor Father Michael Shields and associate pastor Father David Means, of Anchorage and St. Louis, respectively, have been bringing camp survivors together for social gatherings.
It has been challenging to coordinate with the survivors, known here as the repressed, because at first most of them are reluctant to talk, Father Shields said. When most were freed in the 1950s, they were given the worst jobs in the communist system, Father Means said.
Many of their countrymen treat them like criminals despite the fact that by and large they were arrested for their religious beliefs or ethnicity. Stalin used them as free labor to supply his regime with gold, lumber and other resources.
But after two years of effort, many of Magadan’s repressed trust the Catholic parish and are taking part in a video series to document their stories. And about 75 of them gathered last month to meet Archbishop Francis Hurley of Anchorage and Bishop Jerzy Mazur of Irkutsk, Russia, who were in Magadan last month to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Nativity Parish.
Four camp survivors addressed the group at the Jan. 13 meeting.
Vladimir Svertelov, wearing his numbered blue prisoner uniform, said he had volunteered to fight on the front lines during World War II, but was accused of doing "something I was not supposed to do."
"I was returned to my motherland, and my motherland imprisoned me," he said.
Svertelov said he came to believe in God in the camps and that his faith helped him survive the brutal conditions.
Another survivor said she remembers life in her village being "like a fairy tale" where the people would gather in the church for celebrations on feast days.
But, like hundreds of thousands of Orthodox and thousands of Catholics, she was sent to the gulags for her beliefs.
In prison, she said, the faithful would begin stockpiling their daily teaspoon of sugar early in December so they could make sweets for Christmas Day.
Sophia Levshenko, who was arrested for singing in her church choir, told about being interrogated in a cruel way: When she refused to denounce her beliefs, the guards mashed her hand in the door jam.
The visitors winced when she showed them her flattened knuckles.
Archbishop Hurley introduced himself to several of the survivors and asked about their stories. Yivgenia Baclova, 87, showed him a tattered picture of herself and her husband, who died in the camps. She said they were imprisoned because, as German immigrants, they were considered enemies of the people.
All the speakers thanked Nativity Parish for assisting the survivor community.
"I am very grateful to Father Michael for getting us together," said Baclova, who is Orthodox. "He helps us to forget our past. He helps us to feel dignity."
Bishop Mazur assured the group that Catholics would continue to care about them and honor their lives.
"I want to emphasize that we remember the many people who suffered in this land and those who died. The church does not forget them."
The parish is planning to build a new church and attached chapel dedicated to the martyrs of the camps.