Part 1: The Early Years  |  Part 2: The Worst of Times  |  Part 3: The Best of Times
Part 4: Coming To America  |  Part 5: Ivan Opens Art Studio
Part 6: Ivan's Collapse - The Final Chapter

Part 2: The Worst of Times

	Russian Prisoners-of-War

Garikow was still in Leningrad on June 22, 1941 when Adolf Hilter's armies invaded Russia and the siege of Leningrad ensued.

Along with hundreds of other Slavic people, Ivan Garikow was taken as a prisoner of war. He, along with the others, was considered to be an "untermench" (sub-human). It was understood that these people would be exterminated as undesirables by the Nazi regime.

As a prisoner of war, Ivan asked to speak with the officer-in-charge. Knowing that death was an imminent certainty, he requested a piece of charcoal. The officer granted his request, and upon receiving the charcoal, Ivan proceeded to draw a large portrait of Christ on his cell wall.

The officer was so impressed with Ivan's drawing that he assigned him to a compulsory labor factory in Krems, Austria, rather than to be shipped off to a concentration camp where sure death was waiting. Suddenly without warning, Ivan was deported to Krems for the purpose of forced labor.

He spent the next four years of his life there as a captive prisoner.

	Franz Ziereis

Understandably, Garikow did not like to talk about what happened next. Evidence suggests that he was then sent to the infamous Mausthausen concentration camp where Franz Ziereis was in charge.Ziereis noted that for a birthday present, he allowed his eleven year old son to shoot prisoners for target practice from the front porch.

Those close to Ivan say that this evil man was the model for some of Ivan's darker work.

In March of 1945, Ivan escaped his captors and took a job in a tobacco factory in Sankt Valentin. World War II finally ended and from the end of the war until the early 1950s, Garikow's reputation as a painter grew. His stay in Sankt Valentin was to be short-lived. With imminent occupation by the Soviet army into lower Austria and the vivid memories of his life at the concentration camp, Garikow fled to Salzburg in Austria, which was then in the American sector of the Allied occupied zones. There he could quite possibly find freedom.

The early post-war years had been tough. Ivan survived those years by painting people's portraits, farms and homes. Many times he would do the work first and then show it to the property owners. He would then trade the paintings for food. Later, he took work as a mason to supplement his income and he furiously continued to paint.

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