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Museum exhibit /Scissors belonging to a prisoner of the Kolyma Camps.
Nail-scissors, belonging to Mira Aleksandrovna Fainiut (1907-2002), who in 1939-1947 was a prisoner in the Kolyma Camps. In 1937, M.A. Fainiut was given a five-year camp term and in April, 1938, together with her seven-month-old daughter, was sent from Iakutsk to the Administration of the North-East Corrective Labour Camps [USVITL]. On her way to transfer she was permitted to take her nail-scissors, among other items necessary for looking after her baby. Her daughter died in November, 1938, and in May, 1939, M.A. Fainiut was transferred to the Kolyma. During searches and checks she hid the scissors in her bread-ration and used them illegally in the Kolyma camps. In 1992, M.A.Fainiut gave the scissors to the museum of the Research and Information Centre “Memorial” (St Petersburg) in memory of her daughter who had died in the Vladivistok transit camp. (Photo 19.12.2007). | Registration number in museum acquisition book | KP-6 |
| Years and places of existence in subject-related function | 1938 – Prison of Iakutsk city; 10.1938-05.1939 – Vladivostok transit camp, 1939-1951 – Kolyma: El’gen State Farm, a camp section of the Kolyma Experimental Station, from 1942 – Taskan settlement in the Iagodinsk region. |
| Size | Overall length – 10.5cm; greatest width – 4cm. |
| Description of exhibit | Metal nail-scissors with sharp tips. |
| State of preservation | Slightly corroded. |
| Detailed annotation | Nail-scissors which belonged to Mira Aleksandrovna Fainiut (1902-2002). M.A. Fainiut, who in 1935 was exiled from Leningrad to the city of Iakutsk, While in exile she was sentenced to 5 years in a camp in 1937 (decree of the NKVD, 26 June 1937) but neither before her sentence, nor after it was she arrested (the administrative details of how her sentence was postponed are not known, but according to M.A. Fainiut she was not arrested because she was pregnant). After the birth of her daughter, Anna, (born 31.08.1937) she lived alone. (Her husband, Piotr Stepanovich Ivanov (1899-1938) had been arrested in June, 1937, just like her sister’s husband, Pavel Iosifovich Sapozhnikov (1905-1977). Her sister Raissa Aleksandrovna Fainiut (1905-1978) left Iakutsk after the arrest of her husband). By April 1938 she was left without means of subsistence, she could not find a job since she was under sentence. M.A. Fainiut therefore put in a request to the NKVD that she be arrested. She was arrested on the 05.04.1938 and was transferred with her daughter to the Administration of the North-Eastern Corrective Labour Camps. According to Fainiut, during her arrest and transfer they allowed her to take her nail-scissors among other items she needed to look after her child. Her daughter died in November, 1938 and in May 1939 M.A. Fainiut was transferred to the Kolyma. She kept the nail-scissors and used them illegally in the Kolyma camps (1938-1947). During searches and checks she hid the scissors in her bread ration. In 1992, when the scissors were given to the museum of the Research and Information Centre“Memorial”(St Petersburg), she linked these scissors with the memory of her daughter, who died of pneumonia in 1938 in the Vladivostok transit camp. |
Museum exhibit /Scissors belonging to a prisoner of the Kolyma Camps.
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