Sławomir Rawicz

Słavomir Rawicz (1915 – 2004) was a Polish soldier who was arrested by Soviet occupation troops after the German-Soviet invasion of Poland. 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. In 2006, the BBC released a report based on records from the former Soviet Union including some written by Rawicz himself that show that Rawicz was pardoned as a part of a general release of Poles from the Soviet Union in 1942 and was afterward transported across the Caspian Sea to a refugee camp in Iran [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6098218.stm] and that his escape to India apparently never occurred.

His story of his escaping to India is chronicled in a ghost-written book "The Long Walk".

"The Long Walk"

Słavomir Rawicz was born on September 1 1915 in Warsaw , in Poland . 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. 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 to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. 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. The records verify that Rawicz was a Polish soldier but differ on the details of why he was arrested and the camps/prisons in the USSR he was held in.

Rawicz in the book 'The Long Walk' claimed 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.

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.

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, the book claims, they crossed the Lena River. They walked around Lake Baikal and crossed to Mongolia. People they encountered were friendly and hospitable. During the crossing of the Gobi desert described in the book, Krystyna and Makowski are said to have died. The others eventually hit upon the idea of eating snakes to survive.

Around October 1941, the book claims, they reached Tibet. Locals were friendly, especially when the fugitives 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. Rawicz claims they encountered a Yeti in the mountains.

Rawicz claims the survivors reached India around March 1942. The group, he said, met a patrol of soldiers who were later thought to be gurkhas but may have been soldiers of the Assam Rifles or even soldiers from the army of Nepal. Rawicz claimed the survivors were taken 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 book states that the four survivors went their own ways.

In 1942 the book states that Rawicz moved from India to Iraq. He claims to have 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 said he returned to Iraq with Polish troops. He then moved on to Palestine where he spent time recovering in the hospital and teaching in a military school. He 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.

Army records show definitively that he moved from the Soviet Union directly to Iran in 1942 and then on to Palestine. His account, aside from matters concerning his health, after his arrival in Palestine is consistent with his army records. The account of the journey to India is not supported by any records or information other than from Rawicz himself.

Postwar career

After the war he settled in Sandiacre, Nottingham, England and worked in the Nottingham Design Centre afterwards at Nottingham Polytechnic . 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 in 1972 . He lived a quiet peaceful life with his family including 11 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren.

Sławomir Rawicz died April 5, 2004.

Books

* Sławomir Rawicz (with Ronald Downing) - "The Long Walk" (1955) ISBN 1558216847

ee 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.

External links

* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1209467,00.html Obituary written by a friend from the Guardian newspaper]
* [http://home.earthlink.net/~kondus/id20.html Dave Anderson's page about Slavomir Rawicz] and how he retraced the alleged journey.
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6098218.stm BBC presents new evidence showing that the Rawicz story is untrue]
* [http://www.libertyunbound.com/archive/2004_02/merritt-journey.html Incredible Journey by William Merritt]