John H. Noble

John H. Noble (September 4, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American survivor of the Soviet Gulag system, who wrote two books relating to his experiences after being permitted to leave the Soviet Union and return to his native United States. Noble had been born in Detroit, Michigan before settling in Germany with his father and other family members.

Imprisonment

Soviet Special Prison

In late 1945, 23 year old American born Noble was arrested together with his father by Soviet occupation forces in Dresden, Germany and incarcerated in a former German concentration camp that was now under Soviet control. The arrest came about after a newly appointed local Soviet commissar decided to appropriate the Noble family's Practica brand Kamera-Werkstaetten Guthe & Thorsch factory and its stocks of quality cameras. A trumped-up allegation of spying against the Soviets was levelled against the two male members of the family. ^[1] However, subsequently the commissar did not provide sufficient of the cameras to his superiors and he also found himself a fellow prisoner. The concentration camp was the former Buchenwald, now renamed Soviet Special Prison Number 2. Noble apparently became indispensable while assigned prison duties as a secretary and became privy to the general operating procedures of the Soviet East Germany prison system.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike his father Charles A. Noble, who was released in 1952, John was sentenced to a further 15 years in 1950 and transferred to the Soviet Gulag system, when Special Prison Number 2 was closed by the Soviets in early 1950.

Vorkuta

During his transfer through Russia he saw the English phrase scrawled on a cell wall reading "I am sick and don't expect to live through this - Major Roberts". The inscription was dated in mid-August 1950 and believed to have been written by the American soldier Major Frank A Roberts who is recorded as Missing in Action during World War II. ^{[citation needed]} Soon afterwards, Noble's journey continued and he was sent to the coal mining complex of Vorkuta, at the northernmost Urals railhead.

Filling a variety of menial jobs during his imprisonment, the highest being a uniformed lavatory attendant for the staff, he claims to have taken part in the Vorkuta uprising of July 1953 as a prominent leader. According to Noble the Vorkuta camp and many others nearby had been previously taken over by 400 ex-military prisoners in the early 1940's who desperately marched their way several hundred miles west towards Finland before being intercepted and executed. ^[2]^[3] All the camps soon returned to state control.

Noble eventually managed to smuggle out a postcard loosely glued to the back of another prisoner's. The message addressed to a relative in West Germany was passed to his family, who by then had returned to the United States. The postcard was passed to the U.S. State Department who formally requested the Soviet government to release Noble. He was finally released in 1955, together with several American military captives, after the personal intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower ^[4].

Later life

By the mid-1990s, Noble was again residing in Dresden, Germany, where he had originally been taken prisoner 50 years earlier. The factory, but not the trademark, had been restored to family ownership. He died on November 11 2007 after a heart attack.

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).

References

^ I Was a Slave in Russia, by John Noble
^ I Was a Slave in Russia, by John Noble
^ According to Russian sources, the uprising was contained within the camps on August 1, 1953; no mass escape was ever happened.
^ An American Survivor of the Post-war Gulag

"Sir John Noble and Dresden, An American Survivor of the Post-war Gulag," Hugh S. Galford, Personality, Washington International (washingtoninternational.com).

External links

[1] I Was a Slave in Russia, by John Noble

[2] I Was a Slave in Russia, by John Noble

[3] According to Russian sources, the uprising was contained within the camps on August 1, 1953; no mass escape was ever happened.

[4] An American Survivor of the Post-war Gulag

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