That is true, that the word “shmon” (шмон), meaning a kind of very brutal and humiliating shakedown, connected with penetration of intimate parts of body, has Hebrew and/or Yiddish origins (“shmone” = eight, from 8 a.m., typical commencing time of those shakedowns).
However, such shakedowns were called “shmon” already in the 19th century, i.e. in the tsar-Russia, a number of generations before creation of the Gulag.
It means, the word came into being among simple thefts and other criminals of various nationalities incl. Jews, without any causal connection with the later political terror of Stalin against them or any other nationality. (look http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%88%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD)

The word only survived the bolsheviks’ revolution and was in usage also in Gulag-times. It is known also to contemporary Russians.

Besides, it was only one of a lot of Yiddish and Hebrew words which were then sinking to the criminals’ and prisoners’ slangs, of the whole whole empire, i.e. not only into the Russian, but the Polish and Ukrainian as well.

Regards, Leszek