Soviet Gulags may have killed "hundreds" of Americans

CNN.com - Official says hundreds of U.S. citizens likely died in gulags - Feb 11, 2005:
"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. military service members may have been imprisoned and died in Soviet forced-labor camps during the 20th century, according to a Pentagon report to be released Friday."

The report notes that the Russians are still foot-dragging on access to intel records that might offer definitive answers on some of the many cases American officials are trying to sort out based on reports of sightings of Americans by other prisoners over the last 60 years.

The Soviets have long been suspected of abducting Count Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish consular official who helped thousands of Jews escape from Hungary to freedom during WW2. Wallenburg, who was also working covertly as an agent of the US Treasury Department, disappeared in 1945 and may have perished in a Gulag on Wrangell's Island in the Arctic Ocean about twenty years later. Curiously, Wrangell's is one of the US-owned Islands stolen by the Soviets in the 1920s - the only US territories ever seized by force with loss of life that we never attempted to reclaim.

Another interesting case involved a young American (his name escapes me at the moment) who worked as a publisher's rep selling textbooks to colleges. He apparently crossed an unmarked section of the Norwegian-Soviet frontier while on holiday. The Russians eventually said that he committed suicide by slicing his own neck from ear to ear to a depth of an inch by holding a double-edge razor blade in his bare hand - without cutting his hand!

We'll probably never get a full accounting from the Russian authorities. It would be too embarrassing for them and our government has bigger fish to fry.