John H. Noble was an American survivor of the Soviet Gulag system, who wrote two books which described his experiences in it after he was permitted to leave the Soviet Union and return to the United States.
Early life and education
Noble was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father, who was born in Germany, came to the U.S. as a Seventh-day Adventistmissionary in 1922. Finding contradictions in church teachings, he eventually left the church. His mother, a photographer, worked in a photo-finishing company in Detroit and his father became the owner of the company. The Nobles eventually built the company to become one of the top ten photo-finishing companies in the U.S. His father was an acquaintance of a German camera manufacturer who wanted to immigrate to the U.S. and offered to trade his camera factory in Dresden for the Nobles’ company. The German company, which was already notable and would later create landmarks such as the Praktica, became a major international brand, employing 600 workers at the business’ peak. The Nobles stayed in Nazi Germany during World War II and survived the Allies' firebombing of Dresden in February 1945.
In late 1945, 22-year-old U.S.-born Noble was arrested together with his father by Soviet occupation forces in Dresden and incarcerated at the NKVD special camp Nr. 2 which was located on part of the former Buchenwald concentration camp site. The arrest came about after a newly appointed local Soviet commissar decided to appropriate the Noble family's Practica brand Kamera-Werkstaetten Guthe & Thorsch factory and its stocks of quality cameras. A trumped-up allegation of spying against the Soviets was levelled against the two male members of the family. However, the commissar did not provide a sufficient number of the cameras to his superiors, and as punishment, he was arrested and subsequently became a fellow prisoner. Unlike his father Charles A. Noble, who was released in 1952, John was sentenced to a further 15 years in 1950, and was transferred to the Soviet Gulag system when Special Prison Number 2 was closed in early 1950.
Vorkuta
During his transfer through the Soviet Union, he saw the English phrase "I am sick and don't expect to live through this - Major Roberts" scrawled on a cell wall. The inscription which was dated mid-August 1950 is believed to have been written by U.S. soldier Major Frank A. Roberts who is recorded as missing in action during World War II. Soon afterwards, Noble's journey continued and he was sent to the Vorkuta Gulag, at the northernmost Urals railhead in Siberia. Doing a variety of menial jobs during his imprisonment, the highest being a uniformed lavatory attendant for the staff, he took part in the Vorkuta uprising of July 1953 as a prominent leader. According to Noble the Vorkuta camp and many other camps which were located nearby had previously been taken over by the inmates, including 400 purged Soviet ex-World War II military men who desperately opted to march their way several hundred miles west to Finland. Apparently making it halfway en route, those inmates were intercepted and either killed in battle or executed immediately afterwards. All of the camps soon returned to state control. Noble eventually managed to smuggle out a postcard which was loosely glued to another prisoner's back. The message which was addressed to a relative in West Germany was passed to his family, who by then had returned to the United States. The postcard was passed to the U.S. Department of State which formally requested that the Soviet government release Noble. He was finally released in 1955, together with several U.S. military captives, thanks to the personal intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Later life
By the mid-1990s, Noble was again residing in Dresden, the city where he had been taken prisoner 50 years earlier. The factory building, but not its trademark "Praktica", which had been created independently, had been restored to his family's ownership. He died on November 10, 2007 after suffering a heart attack. Noble wrote the following three books about his ordeal:
I Found God in Soviet Russia, by John Noble and Glenn D Everett.
