Julius Margolin

Julius Margolin (Russian: Юлий (Юлиус) Борисович Марголин, October 14, 1900 – January 21, 1971) was a Litvak writer and political activist, and author of the book Journey to the Land of the Ze-Ka (Путешествие в страну Зэ-Ка).

Biography

Margolin was born in Pinsk, West Belarus, then in the Russian Empire. He studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Margolin received his doctorate in philosophy in 1929. He then moved to Łódź, Poland and later to Palestine in 1936. Three years later he was visiting his relatives in Pinsk and was trapped there by the Soviet invasion of Poland. Together with numerous other "socially-dangerous elements", he was rounded up by the NKVD and sent to a labor camp on the northern bank of the Lake Onega. He survived, and was freed in 1945 as a former Polish citizen according to the agreement with Poland. In 1946, he was permitted to return to Poland, from where he moved to Palestine. He immediately started writing Journey to the Land of the Ze-Ka, which was finished in 1947, when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had just been sent to the gulag.[1]

It was impossible to publish such a book about the Soviet Union in the West at that time, immediately after World War II. The manuscript was also rejected in Israel. An abridged version was published in France in 1949.[2] The book was printed in the United States in 1952 by Chekhov Publishing House (also abridged), and was reprinted in 1975.

In 1951, Margolin was a witness in the trial of David Rousset against a French communist newspaper. The paper was engaged in slander of Rousset for revealing information about the gulag to the French public.[3][4]

Publication history of Journey to the Land of the Ze-Ka

  • 1949 - Margoline Jules. La condition inhumaine. Cinq ans dans les camps de concentration Sovietiques Traduit par N. Berberova & Mina Journot. Novembre 1949. Calmann-Levi, Editeurs, Paris.
  • 1952 - Марголин Ю. Б. "Путешествие в страну зэ-ка", 414 стр. Chekhov Publishing House, New York
    • Reprinted several times in various places
  • 1965 - Julius Margolin Uberleben ist alles. Aufzeichnungen aus sowietischen Lagern, Munchen,
  • Separate chapters from the book were also published in various magazines.
  • 2010 - Julius Margolin, Voyage au pays des Ze-Ka. The first complete edition (more than 1/3 of the text had never been published before in any language). Edited by Luba Jurgenson. October 2010, Le Bruit du temps, Paris. More information here.
  • 2013 - Reise in das Land der Lager. Suhrkamp Verlag, November 2013, ISBN 978-3518424063.[5]
  • 2013 - Julius Margolin, "Podróż do krainy zeków", translated by Jerzy Czech, Czarne publishing house, ISBN 978-83-7536-538-2

References

  1. ↑ A traveller to the land of the zeks, by Zeldin, Y., Margolin, Julius., New Times, Moscow, 2001.11. 7, pp. 50-53
  2. ↑ Gaby Levin A body broken, but free Haaretz 21.01.2011
  3. ↑ La bataille de David Rousset, T. Bernard — G. Rosenthal. Pour la vérité sur les camps concentrationnaires. Paris, Le Pavois, 1951: 108-119 (in French)
  4. ↑ The Paris Report, Margolin's article about his involvement in Rousset's affair (in Russian)
  5. ↑ spiegel.de: Sklavendienst für Stalin, suhrkamp.de
  • Margolin, Julius, Voyage au pays des Ze-Ka, Le Bruit du temps, Paris, Oct. 2010.
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