Abram Shimonovich Payes was born in Poland in 1915, immigrated to Argentina, came back to Poland in 1939 right before World War II, served in the Polish army, was captured and spent a year in a German prison camp in Königsberg, escaped, was arrested and sentenced on a bogus charge under article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code (counter-revolutionary activity) and spent 1 year in Karlag (Karaganda GULAG) and 10 years in RechLag (Vorkuta GULAG).

My grandmother, who is 102 years old as of the time of this writing, survived Soviet kulak cleansing, the arrest of her father, and the loss of their farm.  She escaped from the Nazi’s during World War II, saved her aunt’s life, worked impossible jobs in impossible conditions, and met my grandfather in Vorkuta after his release from prison.

My grandparents were very private people and never talked to anyone about their lives.  After my grandfather passed away in 1998, I was going through his papers. I found many documents that dealt with his arrest, time in GULAG, work records, prison release, and “rehabilitation” paperwork.  I started interviewing all of our family members and recording their stories. I poured through photo albums, disintegrating envelopes full of photographs of long-dead family members and friends.  The more stories I heard and the more photos I saw, I realized that many family friends I grew up seeing at our dinner table were former prisoners of RechLag.  I began tracking my grandfather’s friends and people whom he knew in RechLag. Many responded with their own stories, sending me handwritten manuscripts, photographs, and even book chapters.  At this point, I have collected dozens of hours of audio interviews, close to a hundred photographs, and more connections than I ever expected.

For the past 20 years, I’ve been working on a book, but whenever I think I’m almost done, new information comes to light.  Maybe one day I’ll be able to formally publish my work as a book, but in the meantime, I would like to share what I have written so far – a collection of interconnected stories about growing up in the Soviet Union, being Jewish in the Soviet Union, finding out about my grandparents later in life, and the actual stories of my grandfather Arkadiy and my grandmother Olga.