July 1944 – December 1945

After the sentence Euphrosinia was transferred the medium security hut (BUR) of the Eltsovka prison camp near Novosibirsk where hard-core criminals were held. She worked in the laundry hand-washing blood-stained clothes, delivered from the front line. Soon, all the criminals were sent to Krasnoyarsk.

From the port of Zlobino near Krasnoyarsk where prisoners worked loading barges they were taken along the Yenisei River to Norilsk in the ship lower hold. Euphrosinia went to bat for an elderly man whom the criminals humiliated. She saved, as it later turned out, a prominent scientist, Professor N. M. Fedorovsky.

The prisoners reached Norilsk in August 1944. Working at construction of a five-story apartment block Euphrosinia sometimes had to coat its roof with asphalt standing on all fours and maimed her leg. The disease wasn't treated properly and developed into sepsis. In fever she was admitted to the Norilsk prison camp Central Hospital (TsBL) where surgeon Bilzens operated on her leg and saved it. Almost everyone in the hospital medical staff was a prisoner including highly experienced doctors. They were to return prisoners to duty quickly as the Norilsk Works manufactured defence products.

Although the hospital was a part of the camp it nevertheless was "an oasis in Hell" owing to the efforts of the TsBL chief V. I. Gryazneva who managed to arrange human life conditions for prisoners. Such doctors as Vera Ivanovna Gryazneva and Leonhard Mardna, nurse Margarita Emilievna were well-educated intellectual who valued Euphrosinia and wanted to help her.

Upon recovery she worked as a nurse in several TsBL units. Working as a surgical nurse she sketched operations of I. A. Kuznetsov, was in internal medicine training with L. B. Mardna. Euphrosinia became a blood donor entitled to a high-calorie ration which she gave out to the severely ill.

  Euphrosinia could not stay with the team of the infectious disease unit the members of which believed the most important thing to be their personal survival at any cost and paid no regards to the needs of seriously ill patients. Mardna whom she esteemed highly persuaded Euphrosinia to take the job of a morgue anatomist.

Album 7