VP Wallace unaware during his Gulag visit

Quoted from Anne Applebaum’s “Gulag, A History“*:

Henry Wallace, Vice President of the United States, made a trip to Kolyma in May 1944 – and never even knew that he was visiting a prison.

[...]

Before Wallace left, Nikishov gave an elaborate banquet in his honor. Extravagant dishes, their ingredients carved out of prisoners’ rations, were served; toasts were made to Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. Wallace himself made a speech, which included the following memorable words:

Both the Russians and the Americans, in their different ways, are groping for a way of life that will enable the common man everywhere in the world to get the most good out of modern technology. There is nothing irreconcilable in our aims and purposes. Those who so proclaim are wittingly or unwittingly looking for war – and that, in my opinion, is criminal.**

* (C) 2003 by Anne Applebaum, First Anchor Books Edition, May 2004, ISBN 1-4000-3409-4, pp. 441-44
** external reference for this quote back to Henry Wallace source contained in Applebaum’s text.