John H. Noble

John H. Noble (September 4, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American survivor of the Soviet Gulag system, who wrote two books relating to his experiences after being permitted to leave the Soviet Union and return to his native United States.

Noble had been born in Detroit, Michigan. His father, born in Germany, came to the US as a Seventh-day Adventist missionary 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 then his father became the owner of this company. The Nobles eventually built the company to become one of the top ten photo-finishing companies in the US. His father was an acquaintance of a German camera manufacturer who wanted to emigrate to the USA and offered to trade his camera factory in Dresden for the Nobles’ company. The German company, which would later and already without the family's influence create landmarks, such as the Praktica, would become a major international brand, employing 600 workers at the business’ peak.

The Nobles stayed in Germany during World War II and survived the controversial firebombing of Dresden in February 1945.

In late 1945, 22-year-old American-born Noble was arrested together with his father by Soviet occupation forces in Dresden, Germany and incarcerated in a former German concentration camp that was then under Soviet control. 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, subsequently, the commissar did not provide sufficient numbers of the cameras to his superiors, and he also found himself a fellow prisoner. The concentration camp was the former Buchenwald, now renamed Soviet Special Prison Number 2.

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