MAGADAN BY: MICHAEL SOLOMON

Michael Solomon was a journalist living in Bucharest when World War II began. He fled to Palestine and in 1943 joined the British Army. He returned to Romania in 1948 and was arrested as an enemy of the Soviet state. He spent most of his time in the Gulag system imprisoned in Kolyma. After his release in 1956, he was imprisoned in Romania for an additional nine years. After his release, Solomon and his wife immigrated to Canada where he worked as a writer.

Michael Solomon was arrested while walking down the street in Bucharest by six men in black leather coats and caps. They placed him in a car and took him to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “What if they hold me for good? What if this sort of thing was really happening now in Bucharest? No! They couldn’t possibly keep an innocent man in jail just because they hated his opinions, could they? They must bring me before some kind of tribunal, class tribunal, party tribunal, martial court – anything.”