Forced Labor Quotes

“Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days.
The three extra days were for leap years.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

“লড়াই-ঝগড়া বাদাবাদি করে আর যাকেই পাওয়া যাক না, ধর্ম-বস্তুটিকে পাবার জো নেই।”
― Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, গৃহদাহ

“Work, he reckoned, was the best medicine of all.
Work is what horses die of. Everybody should know that.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Shukhov gazed at the ceiling in silence. Now he didn't know whether he wanted freedom or not. At first he'd longed for it. Every night he'd counted the days of his stretch—how many had passed, how many were coming. And then he'd grown bored with counting. And then it became clear that men like him wouldn't ever be allowed to return home, that they'd be exiled.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich

“Let your work warm you up, that was your only salvation.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch

“Antanas eased up on the accelerator and pulled the truck onto the shoulder. The sound of the soldiers' footsteps crunching in the snow made Maria sit up straight. The truck had driven about thirty metres past the patrol, but none of the soldiers had fired upon them. Antanas hoped fervently that the transport documents that Peter had furnished him would pass inspection. Maria reached down and touched a metal pipe concealed beneath her seat. She was prepared to use it.

Jadwyga continued to pray quietly. "Mother Mary, spare me, Maria, and the other women from rape, and Antanas from death."

As a sergeant approached the truck, Jadwyga's stomach cramped, sweat broke out on her forehead, and her arms began to shake. Then she fainted. Maria propped Jadwyga up to make it look as though she was sleeping, and then smiled at the sergeant who was rapping on the glass.

Antanas rolled down his window.”
― Mark Creedon, Caught Between Two Devils

“I used to think if I could be free I should be the happiest woman," a young Mississippi woman recalled. "But when my master come to me, and says 'Lizzie, you is free!' it seems like I was in a kind of daze. And when I would wake up in the morning I would think to myself, Is I free? Hasn't I got to get up before daylight and go into the field and work?”
― Leon F. Litwack

“Added to the shock of the routine violation of their bodies was the trauma of having to relinquish their children to unknown slave-holders. [W.E.B.] Du Bois considered this physical, mental, and spiritual abuse of black women--with its inevitable result being the destruction of the traditional African family--the highest crime committed by slave-holders and the one thing for which he said he could not forgive them.”
― Aberjhani, The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois

“Vagrancy laws and other laws defining activities such as "mischief" and "insulting gestures" as crimes were enforced vigorously against blacks. The aggressive enforcement of these criminal offenses opened up an enormous market for convict leasing.”
― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“In the Far East, compulsory labor can work wonders, just like here... If only Belgium wanted to see that. This could create "inexhaustible resources and exploiting the soil and peoples of the Far East can only be brought to civilization and well-being in this way.”
― Leopold II

“Daylight meant that she must exist in a world that was growing darker and darker because she knew that there was not a man within miles who wanted a plain twenty-nine-year-old spinster.”
― Laura Langdon