Soviet P-63 pilot, escaping with He 111 w.V1(s)

[Josh Osborne]

Originally Posted by marsyao

Josh Osborne, you info is not correct,as Andrey said above, in the war time, the most of the liberated Soviet POWs were sent back to their units, and after the war, they were released and return home

I admit that I was wrong when I said "all SU former POWs". I should have said "some". Surely some were sent back to their units. Indisputably, some were sent to the gulag for no other crime than having been exposed to "western culture" even as a prisoner. Therefore, the fact that the hero of the He 111 escape was sent to the gulag was not due only to the suspicious circumstances. He was one of many tragic cases of a SU POWs who were victimized first by the Nazis, and then by their own government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
QUOTE
After WWII the number of inmates in prison camps and colonies rose again sharply and reached the number of approximately 2.5 million people by the early 1950s (about 1.7 millions of whom in camps). While some of these were deserters and war criminals, there were also repatriated Russians prisoners of war and "Eastern workers", who were universally accused of treason and "cooperation with an enemy" (formally, they did work for Nazis). Large numbers of civilians from the Russian territories which came under foreign occupation, as well as from the territories annexed by the Soviet Union after the war were also sent there. It was not uncommon for the survivors of Nazi camps to be transported directly to the Soviet labour camps.
UNQUOTE