Angela Rohr: Lager (Camp) Aufbau Verlag, 2015, 380 pp : [review]

Abstract

Camp is an autobiographical novel by Austrian writer, journalist and doctor Angela Rohr (1890-1985). It recounts the author’s experiences as both a prisoner and a doctor in the Soviet Gulag. Rohr moved with her husband to Moscow in the 1920s, where, as an ethnic German, she was arrested when Nazi Germany went to war with the Soviet Union. She subsequently spent years in prison and labour camps and was subjected to ‘eternal exile’ in Siberia. Sixteen years after her arrest and four years after Stalin’s death, she was finally ‘rehabilitated’ and spent the rest of her life in Moscow. The novel spans the time between Rohr’s arrival in the Siberian Gulag and her final days in exile.