17: Butara [oil on canvas, 37.7 x 24.3 inches]

Butara is a gold field-more precisely, a place where gold bearing sand was gathered and panned to separate the gold from the sand. The malnourished prisoners worked year round. In the winter months when it was too cold to pan, they would work twelve hours a day breaking up the frozen ground. In the warmer months (the panning season), the day was often extended to sixteen hours. Despite their weakened condition, the prisoners strove to respond to the constant cries of "Move! Move!" from the guards. Failure to meet one's quota meant punishment in the form of a cut in the already meager rations or confinement in a cell with a charge of "sabotage" or slacking off at work. It made no difference whether the inmate was sick or too physically weak to comply with orders. Although he pushed wheelbarrows at a mine, Getman never worked in the gold-sand fields. He learned about the fields from a friend, Leonid Pavlovich Rychkov, depicted in this painting as the man pushing the wheelbarrow. Rychkov appears physically strong because he was an athlete before his arrest.

Done