utter fiction
By whom? Carol
The remarkable tale of cavalry officer Rawicz and six fellow prisoners, who escaped from a Siberian gulag and trekked across the taiga to freedom. It's an astonishing tale of strength and determination. These men, already in poor condition in Yakutsk, manage to sustain themselves on foot over 4,000 miles of barren land and mountains.
longitudebooks.com/find/p/11649/mcms.html
When we look at this and remember what happened when amnesty was granted, the people were half dead and now they were out. Many who could not afford a train are still there today. Others who paid for a ticket out were abandoned along the way.
Going from Kresy took 3-4 weeks with very few stops and a train to get to Siberia. Going out our families had many casualties. Some found farms along the way to work for food.
Even if you were lucky enough to make it to Teheran look at the cemetery's there because they were so depleted and disease was epidemic because of the conditions. Look at the children that were orphaned after amnesty, this continued well into the fifty's and possibly 60's. I read story after story of families having to leave deceased members in unmarked graves on the road out of Siberia. Many of them were woman and small children alone as the husbands and older children went to regroup the Home Army on Russian soil.
On the link below are some that lived to tell. An epic story of human endurance is being challenged. Did wartime prisoners really walk from Siberia to India? What choice were they given? Carol
Once I read about a Polish guy, who escaped from Siberia walking thousands of miles
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6098218.stm
