Slavomir Rawicz (1915-2004) was a Polish soldier who was captured by Soviet troops when they overran Poland and was exiled to Siberia. He and six others escaped and walked over 6500 km (4000 miles) to south, through the Gobi desert, and over the Himalayas to India.
Slavomir Rawicz was born September 11 1915 in Pinsk, in contemporary Poland (currently in Belarus). He was son of landowner and his Russian wife; he learned her language well. He received private primary education and went to study architecture 1932. 1937 he joined polish reserve army and went through cadet officer's school. In 1939 he married - two days before the German invasion into Poland. He never saw his wife after he was mobilized.
When Soviet Union took over Poland, Rawicz returned to Pinsk where NKVD arrested him in November 19 1939. He was taken to Moscow. After a year in Lubyanka prison, he was sentenced, ostensibly for spying, for 25 years of hard labor in a Siberian prison camp. 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'd arrange additional supplies for him and his allies; in return she wished that they'd escape when her husband was absent. Rawicz befriended five men: Polish border guard Sigmund Makowski; toothless Polish cavalryman Anton Paluchowicz; huge Latvian Anatazi Kolemenos; Eugene Zaro; Lithuanian Zacharius Marchikovas; and US engineer who said his name was Smith.
In April 9 1941, Rawicz and his six allies escaped in a middle of a blizzard. They rushed to the south, avoiding towns in fear they'd be betrayed but apparently they were not actively pursued. They also met additional fugitive, Polish woman Kristina.
Nine days later they crossed 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, Kristina and Makowski died. Others had to eat snakes to survive.
In October 1942 they reached Tibet. Locals were friendly, especially when men said they were trying to reach Lhasa. They crossed to Himalayas. Marchinkovas died in his sleep in the cold. They also met hairy creatures Rawicz regarded as Yetis. Paluchowicz fell into a crevasse and disappeared.
Survivors reached India in March 1942. They met a patrol of gurkhas that took them to hospital in Calcutta. For the next four weeks Rawicz primarily slept. After the spell in hospital, the four survivors went to their own ways. They never met again.
Rawicz joined the British forces. In 1942 he served in Iraq and then in Palestine, teaching at the Polish cadet school. Due to recommendation of general Wladyslaw Anders, he came to Britain to train as a pilot as part of a Free Polish air force.
After the war he settled in Nottingham, England and worked as a school handicrafts instructor and as a cabinetmaker. He also married Marjorie Needham in 1946; 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. Serious heart attack forced him into early retirement couple of years later.
Books
- Slavomir Rawicz (with Ronald Downing) - The Long Walk (1955)