John H. Noble
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John H. Noble was a survivor of the Soviet Gulag who wrote about his experiences in two books after being allowed to leave the Soviet Union and return to his native United States.
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[edit] Imprisonment
[edit] Soviet Special Prison
In late 1945, 23 year old American born Noble was taken by Soviet forces and put into prison with his father.
Apparently, a local commisar wanted the family's Practica brand Kamera-Werkstaetten Guthe & Thorsch factory reserve of cameras, and a trumped up crime of spying was charged against the two male members of the family.[citation needed]
The commisar did not pay enough of the cameras to his superiors, and so later became a fellow prisoner. This was the Soviet Special Prison, formerly Buchenwald, where Noble reportably became indespensible while assigned prison duties as a secretary and privy to general operating proceedure of the Soviet East Germany prison system.[citation needed]
Unlike father Charles A. Noble, released in 1952, in 1950 John was sentenced to 15 years and transfered to the Soviet Gulag system when the Special Prison was closed in early 1950.
[edit] Vorkuta
At a Russian midshipment point, he saw the English letters "I am sick and don't expect to live through this...." "Major Roberts" and followed by a date in mid-August 1950, with a Major Frank A. Roberts being a WWII MIA.[citation needed] Soon afterwards, Noble was sent to the coal mining complex of Vorkuta, at the northernmost Urals railhead.
Filling a variety of jobs, the highest being a uniformed lavatory attendant for the staff, he claims to have taken part in the Vorkuta uprising of 1954 as a well-positioned leader. The uprising took place in the relaxed situation immediately after Stalin's death. This camp and many others nearby completely took over, highlighted by 400 ex-military prisoners desperately marching their way some hundred of miles westward towards Finland before being intercepted and executed.[citation needed] All the camps soon returned to moderated state rule.
Sending a postcard loosely glued to the back of another prisoner's, a message to a relative in West Germany notified his family, then returned to living in the United States. The postcard was given to the U.S. State Department to formally request John Noble's return. Along with several other American military captives, he was released in 1955 at the personal intevention of President Eisenhower.[citation needed]
[edit] Later life
As of the mid-1990s, Noble was residing in Dresden, Germany, where he had been taken prisoner 50 years earlier. The factory, but not the trademark, has been returned to family ownership.
Noble wrote the following two books about his ordeal:
- I Found God in Soviet Russia, by John Noble and Glenn D Everett (1959) (Hardcover).
- I Was a Slave in Russia, by John Noble (Broadview, Illinois: Cicero Bible Press, 1961).
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- "Sir John Noble and Dresden, An American Survivor of the Post-war Gulag," Hugh S. Galford, Personality, Washington International (washingtoninternational.com).
[edit] External links
- The Gulag Study - U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs
- The History of the KW (1919 - 1959) - The birthplace of the Praktica
