Library News and Views

By Francine Brady

“The Long Walk” by Slavomir Rawicz is a true story of a trek to freedom.

Rawicz was removed from his home in Poland and imprisoned for 12 months without seeing a judge or having a trial. He was placed in a cell where a man could stand and no more. The cell was not cleaned so he stood in human waste until his knees would buckle. After six months he was led outside and hosed off with cold water and allowed to rinse his cloths and then let them dry on his body. Ill fed, he was often tortured so that he would sign a confession admitting to being a spy. Since he had been a Polish military officer and knew how to speak Polish and Russian — his mother was Russian — the Soviets arrested him as a spy. Finally after being drugged and signing a confession, he was sent through a mock trial and condemned to a Siberian prison labor camp.

From Moscow he and other prisoners were hauled in cattle cars by rail to Irkutsk. From there they were forced to march 800 miles (it took them 40 days) in the Siberian winter to the prison camp. A camp where hunger, cold, no medical care (not even for the guards) and executions were everyday fare. The only thing Rawicz wanted was to escape the prison and Communist rule. 

Under the cover of a snow storm carrying an axe, a knife, a stolen deer hide and a week’s worth of smuggled rations, the author and six of his fellow prisoners escaped the Soviet labor camp in Yakatsk. Always hiding to avoid capture by the Communists and battling the elements, they depended on each other for survival. Their escape took them from Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, over the Himalayas to India. After walking for thousands of miles to India, the remaining brotherhood of four survivors were given refuge by the British government.

In 1997, Rawicz wrote an afterword to the updated edition of the original 1956 publication. The movie, “The Way Back” directed by Peter Weir is the Hollywood movie version of the book. The movie ending differs from the book, but both are a reminder of the universal desire for freedom and dignity. Both the movie and the book leave you with questions.

“The Long Walk” is defintelly a book to put on your reading list. It makes you thankful!