Slawomir Rawicz
Encyclopedia
Sławomir Rawicz was a Polish
Army lieutenant who was imprisoned by the Soviets after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. In a ghost-written book called The Long Walk, he claimed that in 1941 he and six others had escaped from a Siberian Gulag
camp and walked over 6500 km (4,038.9 mi) south, through the Gobi Desert
, Tibet
, and the Himalayas
to finally reach British India
in the winter of 1942. In 2006, BBC released a report based on former Soviet records, including "statements" allegedly written by Rawicz himself, showing that Rawicz had been released as part of the 1942 general amnesty of Poles in the USSR and subsequently transported across the Caspian Sea to a refugee camp in Iran
and that his escape to India never occurred.
In May 2009, Witold Gliński, a Polish WWII veteran living in the UK, came forward to claim that the story of Rawicz was true, but was actually an account of what happened to him, not Rawicz. Gliński's claims have been questioned by various sources.
According to his account, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union defeated Poland, Rawicz returned home, where the NKVD
arrested him on November 19, 1939. He was taken to Minsk
, then sent to Kharkov for interrogation, then to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he was put on rigged trial. He was tortured to make him confess to being a spy which initially was unsuccessful. He was sentenced to 25 years of hard labour in a Siberian prison camp, ostensibly for espionage as were thousands of others. Though the researchers for the BBC Radio program The Long Walk in 2006 unearthed documents indicating that the charge against Rawicz may have been for killing, in the defence of his country, a Russian NKVD
officer.
and made to walk to the Gulag
Camp 303, which was 650 km south of the Arctic Circle
. His labour duties in the camp included the construction of the prisoners' barracks, the manufacture of skis for the Russian army, and the repair and operation of the camp commandant's radio.
In The Long Walk, Rawicz describes how he and six companions escaped from the camp in the middle of a blizzard
in 1941 and headed south, avoiding towns. The fugitive party included three Polish soldiers, a Latvian landowner, a Lithuanian architect, and an enigmatic US metro engineer called "Mr. Smith"; they were later joined by a 17-year-old Polish girl, Krystyna. They journeyed from Siberia to India crossing the Gobi Desert and Himalayas. Four of the group died, two in the Gobi, two in the Himalayas. The book also mentions the spotting of a pair of yeti
-like creatures in the Himalayas.
According to the book, four survivors of the 11-month trek reached British India around March 1942 and stumbled upon a Gurkha
patrol. They were taken to a hospital in Calcutta. Once released from the hospital, the survivors went their own ways. Some were still permanently sick from the torture they had faced at the Russian camp.
, then re-entered the Soviet Union in June 1942 and rejoined the Polish Army on July 24, 1942 at Kermini. He then returned to Iraq with Polish troops and moved on to Palestine, where he spent time recovering in a hospital and teaching in a military school. He claimed that General Władysław Anders had recommended his transfer to Britain for training as a pilot of the Polish Air Forces in Great Britain.
, Nottingham
, England
and worked at the Nottingham Design Centre. He married Marjorie Gregory née Needham in 1947; they had five children. In the early 1970s he became a technician at the Architectural Ceramics course at Nottingham Trent University
School of Art and Design. A heart attack forced him into early retirement in 1975. He lived a quiet life with his family, giving public talks and answering fan mail, until his death on 5 April 2004.
, directed by Peter Weir
was based on the book and released in late 2010.
Over the years, critics of the book's accuracy have included Peter Fleming (the brother of Ian Fleming
), Eric Shipton
and Hugh E. Richardson
, a British diplomat stationed in Lhasa
.
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
Army lieutenant who was imprisoned by the Soviets after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. In a ghost-written book called The Long Walk, he claimed that in 1941 he and six others had escaped from a Siberian Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
camp and walked over 6500 km (4,038.9 mi) south, through the Gobi Desert
Gobi Desert
The Gobi is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the...
, Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
, and the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
to finally reach British India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
in the winter of 1942. In 2006, BBC released a report based on former Soviet records, including "statements" allegedly written by Rawicz himself, showing that Rawicz had been released as part of the 1942 general amnesty of Poles in the USSR and subsequently transported across the Caspian Sea to a refugee camp in Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
and that his escape to India never occurred.
In May 2009, Witold Gliński, a Polish WWII veteran living in the UK, came forward to claim that the story of Rawicz was true, but was actually an account of what happened to him, not Rawicz. Gliński's claims have been questioned by various sources.
Early life and army career
Sławomir Rawicz was born on 1 September 1915 in Warsaw, the son of a landowner. He received private primary education and went on to study architecture in 1932. In 1937 he joined the Polish Army Reserve and underwent the cadet officer school. In July 1939 he married Vera, his first wife. She went missing during WWII.According to his account, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union defeated Poland, Rawicz returned home, where the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
arrested him on November 19, 1939. He was taken to Minsk
Minsk
- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...
, then sent to Kharkov for interrogation, then to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow, where he was put on rigged trial. He was tortured to make him confess to being a spy which initially was unsuccessful. He was sentenced to 25 years of hard labour in a Siberian prison camp, ostensibly for espionage as were thousands of others. Though the researchers for the BBC Radio program The Long Walk in 2006 unearthed documents indicating that the charge against Rawicz may have been for killing, in the defence of his country, a Russian NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
officer.
The Long Walk - Escape from the Gulag camp and walk to India
According to the account in the book, Rawicz was transported, alongside thousands of others, to IrkutskIrkutsk
Irkutsk is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, one of the largest cities in Siberia. Population: .-History:In 1652, Ivan Pokhabov built a zimovye near the site of Irkutsk for gold trading and for the collection of fur taxes from the Buryats. In 1661, Yakov Pokhabov...
and made to walk to the Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
Camp 303, which was 650 km south of the Arctic Circle
Arctic Circle
The Arctic Circle is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. For Epoch 2011, it is the parallel of latitude that runs north of the Equator....
. His labour duties in the camp included the construction of the prisoners' barracks, the manufacture of skis for the Russian army, and the repair and operation of the camp commandant's radio.
In The Long Walk, Rawicz describes how he and six companions escaped from the camp in the middle of a blizzard
Blizzard
A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong winds. By definition, the difference between blizzard and a snowstorm is the strength of the wind. To be a blizzard, a snow storm must have winds in excess of with blowing or drifting snow which reduces visibility to 400 meters or ¼ mile or...
in 1941 and headed south, avoiding towns. The fugitive party included three Polish soldiers, a Latvian landowner, a Lithuanian architect, and an enigmatic US metro engineer called "Mr. Smith"; they were later joined by a 17-year-old Polish girl, Krystyna. They journeyed from Siberia to India crossing the Gobi Desert and Himalayas. Four of the group died, two in the Gobi, two in the Himalayas. The book also mentions the spotting of a pair of yeti
Yeti
The Yeti or Abominable Snowman is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, and Tibet. The names Yeti and Meh-Teh are commonly used by the people indigenous to the region, and are part of their history and mythology...
-like creatures in the Himalayas.
According to the book, four survivors of the 11-month trek reached British India around March 1942 and stumbled upon a Gurkha
Gurkha
Gurkha are people from Nepal who take their name from the Gorkha District. Gurkhas are best known for their history in the Indian Army's Gorkha regiments, the British Army's Brigade of Gurkhas and the Nepalese Army. Gurkha units are closely associated with the kukri, a forward-curving Nepalese knife...
patrol. They were taken to a hospital in Calcutta. Once released from the hospital, the survivors went their own ways. Some were still permanently sick from the torture they had faced at the Russian camp.
WWII activities after imprisonment
According to Rawicz, he moved from India to IraqIraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, then re-entered the Soviet Union in June 1942 and rejoined the Polish Army on July 24, 1942 at Kermini. He then returned to Iraq with Polish troops and moved on to Palestine, where he spent time recovering in a hospital and teaching in a military school. He claimed that General Władysław Anders had recommended his transfer to Britain for training as a pilot of the Polish Air Forces in Great Britain.
Historical records
Soviet records confirm that Rawicz was a Polish soldier imprisoned in the USSR, but differ from The Long Walk in detail on the reasons for his arrest and the exact places of imprisonment. Polish Army records show that Rawicz left the USSR directly for Iran in 1942, which contradicts the book's storyline. Aside from matters concerning his health, his arrival in Palestine is verified by the records. The story of the escape to India comes from Rawicz himself. The BBC report does mention the account of Captain Rupert Mayne, an intelligence officer in Calcutta, who - years after the war - said that in 1942 he had debriefed three emaciated men claiming to have escaped from a Siberian Gulag camp.Postwar life
After the war he settled in SandiacreSandiacre
Sandiacre is a town in the Borough of Erewash in Derbyshire, in the East Midlands region of England adjoining the border with Nottinghamshire....
, Nottingham
Nottingham
Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and worked at the Nottingham Design Centre. He married Marjorie Gregory née Needham in 1947; they had five children. In the early 1970s he became a technician at the Architectural Ceramics course at Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham Trent University
Nottingham Trent University is a public teaching and research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as a new university in 1992 from the existing Trent Polytechnic , however it can trace its roots back to 1843 with the establishment of the Nottingham Government School of Design...
School of Art and Design. A heart attack forced him into early retirement in 1975. He lived a quiet life with his family, giving public talks and answering fan mail, until his death on 5 April 2004.
The Long Walk
The Long Walk was ghost-written by Ronald Downing based on conversations with Rawicz. It was released in the UK in 1956 and has sold over half a million copies worldwide and has been translated into 25 languages. The film, The Way BackThe Way Back
The Way Back is a 2010 drama film about a group of prisoners who escape from a Siberian Gulag camp during World War II. The film is directed by Peter Weir from a screenplay also by Weir and Keith Clarke, inspired by The Long Walk , a book by Sławomir Rawicz, a Polish POW in the Soviet Gulag. It...
, directed by Peter Weir
Peter Weir
Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...
was based on the book and released in late 2010.
Over the years, critics of the book's accuracy have included Peter Fleming (the brother of Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
), Eric Shipton
Eric Shipton
Eric Earle Shipton CBE was a distinguished British Himalayan mountaineer.-Early years:Born in Ceylon in 1907 where his father, a tea planter, died before he was three years old. His mother buried her grief by taking Eric and his sister Marge and travelling constantly for the next five years...
and Hugh E. Richardson
Hugh E. Richardson
Hugh E. Richardson was a British diplomat and Tibetologist. His academic work focused on the history of the Tibetan empire, and in particular on epigraphy. Born in St. Andrews, he studied classics at Keble College, Oxford...
, a British diplomat stationed in Lhasa
Lhasa
Lhasa is the administrative capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China and the second most populous city on the Tibetan Plateau, after Xining. At an altitude of , Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world...
.
See also
- The Way BackThe Way BackThe Way Back is a 2010 drama film about a group of prisoners who escape from a Siberian Gulag camp during World War II. The film is directed by Peter Weir from a screenplay also by Weir and Keith Clarke, inspired by The Long Walk , a book by Sławomir Rawicz, a Polish POW in the Soviet Gulag. It...
, a 2010 movie - Ferdynand Antoni OssendowskiFerdynand Antoni OssendowskiAntoni Ferdynand Ossendowski was a Polish writer, journalist, traveler, globetrotter, explorer and university professor...
, an author of an account of escape from Siberia during the Russian Civil War in the 1920s - Seven Years in TibetSeven Years in TibetSeven Years in Tibet is an autobiographical travel book written by Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer based on his real life experiences in Tibet between 1944 and 1951 during the Second World War and the interim period before the Communist Chinese People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet in...
, the story of an Austrian mountaineerHeinrich HarrerHeinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer, sportsman, geographer, and author.He is best known for his books Seven Years in Tibet and The White Spider .-Athletics:...
who escapes from British India into Tibet during the Second World War. - Cornelius RostCornelius RostCornelius Rost was a German World War II soldier who became known for having escaped a Soviet Gulag camp in Siberia. His experiences were the basis for a book, a TV series, and a movie.-Biography:...
- Looking for Mr. Smith by Linda Willis (2010), a research tale into the story behind The Long Walk.
Further reading
- Freedom Trek Grigg, William Norman Apr 19, 2004 The New American http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Freedom+trek:+fleeing+the+Soviet+Gulag,+Slavomir+Rawicz+and+six+...-a0115696394
External links
- Obituary written by a friend from the Guardian newspaper
- Dave Anderson's page about Slavomir Rawicz and how he retraced the alleged journey.