Now again we are not supposed to remember the past and think-let alone speak about it. (42: Last Letter) - Nadezhda Mandelstam

People like myself were the lucky ones who had not gone to prison. Knowing what it was like to live in "freedom," I was always thinking of those who were behind barbed wire. This was why I could not think about myself, but only about all the others-those who had gone away and would never return, those who still nourished hopes of coming back but would never live to see the day. Every time I heard rumors of new arrests, it was like salt in my own fresh wounds. In the midst of such general misery and doom, the word "I" lost its meaning, becoming shameful or taboo. Who dared talk about his own fate or complain about it when it was the same for everybody?

I am even now constantly tormented by the thought of those years of life we were not allowed to live. I am always wondering what they would have been like if we had not been cheated of them. (28: Stages in My Life)

It is true that "forced labor" is too mild a term for the camps of the twentieth century and that nobody in the world would actually want to go into a camp or gas chamber.