Sławomir Rawicz
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Sławomir Rawicz (1915 – 2004) by his account, was a Polish cavalry officer who was arrested by Soviet occupation troops after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland and was exiled to Siberia. In a book he participated in writing, he claimed that he and six others escaped and walked over 6500 km (4000 miles) south, through the Gobi desert, and over the Himalayas to India. None of the others who escaped with him have ever been identified or come forward. No evidence beyond the account of Sławomir Rawicz himself exists for the journey.
His story is chronicled in a ghost-written book The Long Walk, whose veracity has been controversial since the book was published.
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[edit] The Long Walk
Słavomir Rawicz was born on September 1, 1915 in Pińsk, in Russia (afterward Poland now Belarus). He was the son of a landowner and his Russian wife; he learned Russian. He received private primary education and went to study architecture in 1932. In 1937 he joined the Polish reserve army and went through cadet officer's school. In 1939 he married Vera, two days before the German invasion into Poland. After he was mobilized, he only saw his wife for a few days altogether.
By Rawicz's account, when the Soviet Union and Germany took over Poland, Rawicz returned to Pińsk where NKVD arrested him on November 19, 1939. He was taken to Moscow. He was first sent to Kharkov for interrogation, and then after trial he was sent to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow though these details after his arrest have not been validated from soviet sources. He claims to have successfully resisted all attempts to torture a confession out of him in prison. He was sentenced, ostensibly for spying, to 25 years of hard labor in a Siberian prison camp. Soviet records discovered in 2006 conflict with his account.
Rawicz said he was transported, alongside thousands of others, to Irkutsk and made to walk to Camp 303, 650 km south of the Arctic Circle, to build the camp from the ground up. Neither the existence of Camp 303 nor the records of his trial have been found in Soviet records. Nor have the military records of the camp commander Ushakov or his wife been located.
According to his later account, Rawicz received unexpected help from the wife of the camp commander, Ushakov, when he was asked to look at their radio set. She arranged additional supplies for him and his allies; in return she wished that they'd escape when her husband was absent. Rawicz befriended six men: Polish border guard Zygmunt Makowski; toothless Polish cavalryman Anton Paluchowicz; huge Latvian Anastazi Kolemenos; Eugene Zaro; Lithuanian Zacharius Marchikovas; and a US engineer who said his name was Smith. No record of any of these persons has ever been found in any country.
On 9 April 1941, Rawicz claimed that he and his six allies escaped in a middle of a blizzard. They rushed to the south, avoiding towns in fear they would be betrayed, but apparently they were not actively pursued. They also met an additional fugitive, Polish woman Krystyna.
Nine days later they crossed the Lena River. They walked around Lake Baikal and crossed to Mongolia. Fortunately, people they encountered were friendly and hospitable. During the crossing of the Gobi desert, Krystyna and Makowski died. Others had to eat snakes to survive.
Around October 1941 they claim to have reached Tibet. Locals were friendly, especially when men said they were trying to reach Lhasa. They crossed the Himalayas somehow in the middle of winter. Marchinkovas died in his sleep in the cold. Paluchowicz fell into a crevasse and disappeared. They also met hairy creatures Rawicz regarded as Yetis. Doubt has been cast on that part of the story as his ghostwriter, Ronald Downing, was a British reporter actively seeking stories of the Yeti.
Rawicz claims the survivors reached India around March 1942, but the date is very much open to speculation. The party claims to have met a patrol of soldiers who have been later thought to be gurkhas but may have been soldiers of the Assam Rifles or even soldiers from the army of Nepal. Rawicz claimed they took them first to a field hospital and then to a hospital in Calcutta. For the next four weeks Rawicz primarily slept. After the spell in the hospital, the four survivors went their own ways. They never met again. No person in India – military, political or medical – has ever been found who remembers Rawicz.
In 1942 Rawicz moved from India to Iraq. He then re-entered the Soviet Union at the end of June 1942 and rejoined the Polish Army on July 24, 1942 at Kermini. At some later point, he returned to Iraq with Polish troops. He then moved on to Palestine where he claimed to have spent time recovering in the hospital and teaching in a military school. He further claims to have been recommended by General Władysław Anders and Colonel Luzinski to come to Britain to train as a pilot as part of a Free Polish air force. But no military records exist in the Free Polish forces that document the recommendation or even his service in the Polish Air Force. No information has ever been produced to suggest that General Anders or Colonel Luzinski ever knew of Rawicz.
When the book was published, it generated a great amount of activity among those who had served in India during the war years. Many questioned the book then and continue to question the book today. The greatest problem for those who try to prove or disprove the contents of the book is the lack of any kind of witness or documentary trail for any of the events in India and the existence of contrary records.
[edit] Postwar career
After the war he settled in Sandiacre, Nottingham, England and worked as a school handicrafts instructor and as a cabinetmaker. The facts of his life in the postwar period can be validated from public records. He married Marjorie Gregory née Needham in 1947; they had five children. In the 1960s, the Nottingham building and design centre employed him before it was closed. In the early 1970s he became a technician on the architectural ceramics course at modern-day Nottingham Trent University school of art and design. A serious heart attack forced him into early retirement couple of years later. He lived a quiet peaceful life with his family including 11 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren.
Sławomir Rawicz died April 5, 2004.
[edit] Books
- Sławomir Rawicz (with Ronald Downing) - The Long Walk (1955) ISBN 1558216847
[edit] See also
- Ferdynand Ossendowski, an author of an account of escape from Siberia during the Russian Civil War in the 1920s
- Seven Years in Tibet, the story of an Austrian mountaineer who escapes from British India into Tibet during the Second World War.
