Yertsevo (Russian: Ерцево) is a rural locality (a settlement) in Konoshsky District of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, located west of Lake Vozhe.

[9] It was located about 3 miles (4.8 km) from the forest where the prisoners cut lumber all day, year-round, usually up to their waist in snow, emaciated, and always hungry.

[10] Yertsevo was granted urban-type settlement status in 1960,[citation needed] but was demoted to a rural locality on January 1, 2005.

Captured by the NKVD in early 1940 as a Polish army soldier soon after the Soviet invasion of Poland, Herling-Grudziński spent a year and a half in the Yertsevo camp.

Some of them self-mutilated themselves at work by cutting off their fingers and rubbing dirt into the wounds in order to be sent to the camp infirmary, the only escape from death by exhaustion.