Life Inside

The camps were built to squeeze maximum labor from prisoners while spending as little as possible on keeping them alive. The logic was brutal: people were cheaper than machines. In the harshest camps, more than 25% of prisoners died each year.

Prisoners worked 12- to 16-hour days in mines, logging camps, and on construction sites. Food rations were tied to how much they produced, so the weakest fell into a downward spiral. In camps above the Arctic Circle, winter temperatures dropped to minus fifty degrees, and frostbite and exhaustion were constant threats.