Joseph Scholmer was a doctor working for the Central Health Authority in Berlin when he was accused of being an agent of the Gestapo and of the American and British Secret Services in May of 1949. He spent the years from 1949 to 1953 in the Gulag camp at Vorkuta. Assigned to work in the wood yard, Scholmer soon realized that he would never be able to achieve the work norm and asked a fellow prisoner to smash his hand so that he would be unable to do hard labor. He was then assigned to assist in the burials of dead prisoners and watched as guards smashed the skulls of the corpses to assure that they were really dead.