It was difficult to search, but as a result there appeared these memoirs, letters and notes, although imperfect in their presentation, but recreating the image and life of Fr. Arseny.

At the beginning of my work, I had no idea at first what kind of material and volume the book would collect, but now I clearly see that there will be three parts: The Camp, the first part, and you will read it now, the second part, The Path, which will include individual letters, memoirs, and stories of people who knew and know Fr. Arseny. The second part has been written, but needs to be improved, and for the third part, a lot of material has been collected, on which there is still a lot of work to be done. I pray the Lord to help me.

It would be presumptuous to say: I wrote, I collected. Many and many dozens of people who knew and loved Fr. Arseny wrote, collected, and sent me their notes, and this belongs to them. I only tried, like all those whom Fr. Arseny raised and put on the path of faith, to pay a small part of the unrepayable debt to the man who saved me and gave me a new life.

After reading the notes, remember the health of the servant of God Alexander, and this will be a great reward for me.

CAMP

The darkness of the night and the bitter frost shackled everything except the wind. The wind carried snow charges, which, spinning, exploded in the air, turned into clouds of fine prickly snow. Hitting obstacles, the wind threw shreds of snow, picked up new ones from the ground and again rushed somewhere forward.

Sometimes there was a sudden lull, and then in the darkness of the night a gigantic spot of light would shine on the ground. In the streaks of light lay the city, spread out in the lowlands. Barracks, barracks, and barracks covered the ground.

Towers with searchlights and sentries standing on them went beyond the horizon. Strings of barbed wire stretched between the poles formed several barricading rows, between which lay streaks of blinding light from searchlights.

Between the first and last rows of barbed wire, guard dogs wandered lazily.

The beams of searchlights fell from some of the towers and threw themselves on the ground, slid over it, climbed onto the roofs of the barracks, fell from them to the ground, and ran again through the camp, surrounded by wire.

Some of the searchlights licked the space outside the camp and, having run around a certain sector, returned to the rows of barbed wire, only to start running again in a few moments.

Soldiers with machine guns, standing on the towers, continuously scanned the space between the rows of wire barriers. The lull did not last long, the wind suddenly broke again, and everything roared again, hummed, howled, prickly snow covered a bright patch of light, and darkness enveloped the valley.

The special purpose camp was still asleep, but suddenly there was a blow on the hanging rail, at first one, at the entrance to the camp, and then under the blows the steel rails rang in various places of the camp.

The searchlights on the towers were frantically swept around, the gates of the camp opened, and covered trucks with educators, guards, regime workers and civilian employees began to enter the zone one after another.