As unpleasant as prisons are, there is simply no comparison to the experiences of those who went into the Gulags.QuoteAmong the prisoners there are some so ragged and liceridden that they pose a sanitary danger to the rest. These prisoners have deteriorated to the point of losing any resemblance to human beings. Lacking food . . . they collect orts [refuse] and, according to some prisoners, eat rats and dogs. It was these Siberian camps, devoted either to gold-mining or timber harvesting, that inflicted the greatest toll in the Gulag system. Such camps can only be described as extermination centres, according to Leo Kuper. The camp network that came to symbolize the horrors of the Gulag was centered on the Kolyma gold-fields, where outside work for prisoners was compulsory until the temperature reached 50C and the death rate among miners in the goldfields was estimated at about 30 per cent per annum. Trivializing the Gulags is a mistake.