Australian War Memorial
Bund Deutscher Maedel
Burke and Wills – Terra Incognita
Census of 1910 tuberculosis data
Census data is one way for historians to better understand the lives of average people who otherwise might be largely invisible to scholars. This excerpt from the 1910 census conducted by the Hapsburg Monarchy. The census data was collected for most towns and cities throughout the Monarchy every few years from between 1880 and 1910. It covers occupation, disease, language, and literacy for men... Read More »
Cinderella (1914)
Slotted to premier on Christmas week, Famous Players’s Cinderella (1914) was marketed as a child-friendly fantasy for the whole family whose cutting-edge cinematography would bring to life the popular fairytale of rags-to-riches girlhood. However, Cinderella was foremost conceived as a vehicle for rising star Mary Pickford. Pickford had built a reputation playing ingénues... Read More »
Days and Lives: Arrest
Soviet citizens during Stalin's reign lived in constant fear of arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment. Once arrested, the accused had no rights to protest their incarceration and no access to a fair trial. Prisoners were either sentenced to death or to years of hard labor in the Gulag.
Days and Lives: Arrest - Trial
In the following excerpt from Stolen Years, several prisoners recall the farcical justice of a Soviet trial.
Days and Lives: Conflict
In the Gulag camps, prisoner life was dangerous. Fear of gang violence and rape was very real, and conflicts ensued between criminal and political prisoners and among inmates from different ethno-national groups.
Days and Lives: Criminal Gangs
The tattooed members of the Gulag’s criminal gangs posed the most serious threat to those who did not belong. These criminal gangs maintained their own vicious subculture in the Gulag, one notable for its vulgar language, pornographic tattoos, gambling (often with the life and limbs of other prisoners as the stakes), and violence against all inmates not in the gang. Criminal gangsters robbed,... Read More »
Days and Lives: Fates
Survivors of the Gulag often found their former lives torn apart and irrecoverable after leaving the camps. Released prisoners experienced discrimination and alienation making living and working difficult. Those who did survive have contributed immensely to the documentation of the Gulag's history.