Exhibition "Material evidence. Folder with sketches"

The history of the Gulag Museum continues a series of exhibitions of one exhibit - a physical evidence of the era of Stalinist repression. The new exhibition is devoted to a folder with sketches of children's toys, made in the camp by the artist Boris Kreutzer.

Boris Kreutzer was an outstanding book illustrator, architect, poster artist. Close contact with foreign colleagues and the neighborhood of a communal apartment with Japanese experts made the artist the main object of attention of the NKVD. In 1938, he barely escaped execution on a fabricated case and was sent to camps as a German and Japanese spy.

While imprisoned in the Komi Republic, Kreutzer, at the request of the NKVD, made a series of sketches of toys.

After twenty years in prison, Kreutzer returned to Leningrad in 1956, was fully rehabilitated and was able to return to creative work. However, he did not manage to completely forget the experienced horror. When there were unexpected phone calls, he repeated: "This is after me."