The first thing I saw after entering the 8th hut was a heartbreaking scene, a young mother, almost a girl herself, struggled in the soldier's grasp begging, "Let me feed him for the last time! For the last time!"
And a decrepit old woman hurriedly trotted away carrying a baby wrapped in a little blanket. All the moms present envied, "You are happy to have a granny... What about us?"
The baby was born free, the mother just started unwinding her coil* - 10 year sentence.
______________
* Coil – 1. Amount of imprisonment time under the actual article of the Criminal Code. 2. Big Coil – from 1937 to early 40s means 20 years of imprisonment; from early 40-s to 1959 – 25 years. Note: in 1937 maximum punishment length was raised from 10 to 25 years but for some time it actually was 20 years. “To get the big coil to unwind” means to be sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment (after 1937) or 25 (from early 40s to 1959). 3. Smaller Coil (after 1937) is 10 years of imprisonment. (Jaques Rossi.The Gulag handbook: an encyclopedia dictionary of Soviet penitentiary institutions and terms related to the forced labor camps.)