On his second visit, Grace sent for a private doctor, who examined her father’s skeletal body and diagnosed a combination of the typical illnesses of a Gulag prisoner: dysentery, pellagra, malaria, and pneumonia. It was also very likely that he was suffering from tuberculosis, since he was coughing up blood. There was little more that could be done, and a short while afterward, Joseph Sgovio died with his family by his bedside, having begged their forgiveness for ever bringing them to the Soviet Union. At the very end, he held their hands: “Forgive me . . . goodbye.”
