The true story of Slavomir Rawicz, a Pole who was arrested by the Soviets in 1939, charged with spying, and sent to a prison camp in Siberia is chronicled in the memoir, The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom.

Rawicz’s only “crime” was being a Polish officer living too close to the Russian border, and soon after arriving at the camp, he and some fellow-prisoners began planning their escape.

“We were all long-haired and heavily bearded-I had not had a haircut or shave for nearly a year.  Our clothes were the same. When we had all been herded into the yard there were about 150 men like me all holding trousers.  One hundred and fifty lost souls turning up in the same pitiful costume at some devil’s fancy dress ball.”

With the help of a sympathetic warden’s wife, they amassed warm clothing and a few days’ worth of food and set out on a trek covering thousands of miles, heading south through Siberia, through China, across the Gobi Desert, through Tibet, and over the Himalayas to freedom and asylum in British-controlled India.

Traveling mostly at night, eating snakes, rats, bark, fish, and anything else they can find, they traveled south. Their clothes became rags; for shoes, they had only rough moccasins which they would replace along the way with skins from animals they had caught. Whether sick with scurvy, or tormented by lice, the survivors never stopped walking. Six men begin the trek, and a runaway girl, along the way three died of dehydration and/or exhaustion.

After a period of madness and medical attention, Rawicz moves to England and shares his story first with his wife.  Then, as a form of therapy wrote it down for himself.  If you have ever wondered what the human spirit can endure, and what courage looks like, then this is a story for you. There are even a few surprises along the way, including a big foot sighting. The author wrote, that during his escape, he and his companion escapees saw two eight-foot tall hair-covered creatures somewhere between Bhutan and Sikkim.

This non-fiction work will keep you riveted from the first page to the last.  I highly recommend this book for any reader who is a fan of adventure/survival writing.

“I hope The Long Walk will remain as a memorial to all those who live and die for freedom, and for all those who for many reasons could not speak for themselves.”–Slavomir Rawicz

GENRE: Biography