Win The Long Walk The True Story Of A Trek To Freedom Drafted By Slavomir Rawicz Released As Hardcover

officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army induring the GermanSoviet partition of Poland and was sent to the Siberian Gulag, . . more. This book has had a huge influence in my life, It is the book that I read when I need to be reminded of how much the human heart and body can endure, It is the story I think of when I feel that my life is out of my control, When I need to be reminded that my life is not that bad that I really don't have it as tough as I think I do.
What Rawicz endures opens my heart to human suffering outside of my own and I am so greatful to him for sharing his story, Tragic and difficult but also hypnotic,

The reader may question the complete veracity of the account and and may be somewhat disappointed to learn of the amount of criticism and doubt surrounding his story.
Essentially, a group of political prisoners in a Soviet prison in Siberia literally walk out of captivity, The idea is that an escaped prisoner will die in the bitter cold and unforgiving wilderness of eastern Asia, The group walks across Siberia and into the Gobi desert and then to the Himalayas, Di they really see a Yeti

A very interesting book,

OK, here is my gut feeling, I do not know if all of this is true, Right smack in the beginning sections just did not seem believable, Once I started thinking this way my feelings toward the book were wrecked, If there is one inconsistency, do you believe the rest I will list some of the points that I found quite unbelievable, I must add, that for none of these points can I prove I am right, That there is ALWAYS a good explanation for each peculiar instance is almost another complaint, Everything is so fullproof, that it doesn't ring true, I am a born sceptic, . .

. First of all, why are there no notes that document these experiences, To believe this I need the notes,
. Seven men escape from a gulag in Siberia just south of Yakutsk, The seven men manage to get themselves all placed in the same building, a building located near their escape route, How did they pull this off Other men were sleeping in the barracks and none of the others awoke, Is this believable I certainly hear when someone gets up or even moves in my bedroom, I know. I know. These men were exhausted, but still I find it strange, Furthermore the author, the instigator of the escape plan, is aided by the wife of the commanding officer of the gulag, . . I mean give me a break, Everything is explained so well, that I do not believe it, Real life has hitches.
. When they escape they are never chased, Nothing.
. They manage to survive the Siberian cold and get through the Govi desert, Three of the seven do die,
. Along the way they are joined by a woman, She does die in the desert, But the whole thing is kind of "cute",
. Then the final bit is just too much, They meet the, not one but two, Abominable Snowmen, The way it is described is just too much, They are drawn up as couple, When the group departs the text reads:

"We pushed off around the rock and directly away from them, I looked back and the pair were standing still, arms swing slightly, as though listening intently, "

I don't have the energy to quote more,

On the other hand, if this book is true I feel like a total creep, There are elements that seem to bring forth a romanticism to sell the book, There is a huge bear playing music on a tree trunk, OK, bears do play. Do you see what I mean There is always an explanation, In the end I feel uncomfortable, Is the book true I belive parts are true, I believe the description of the prisons and the torture procedures they rang true, Oh yes, at one point the author is punched in the face and all his teeth on that side fall out, Then the guy beating him says to head is off balance, He slugs the other side, and those teeth fall out too, However later in the book, it is mentioned that one of the group has trouble eating their rough food because he has no teeth, The author never has this problem, But I thought his teeth were punched out, They clattered on the floor!

What I did like was the description of the people in Tibet, You got close to these people and saw a glimpse of their lifestyle, There were also two excellent maps, The writing style is just factual, neither exceptionaly bad nor good,

I fthis is true I feel terrible, The author has raised money talking about his experiences, This money has gone toward helping orphans in Poland, Knowing this, I do feel a bit uncomfortable criticizing the book, I have to tell you how I see it, Opening Line: “It was about nine oclock one bleak November day that the key rattles in the heavy lock of my cell in the Lubyanka Prison and the two broadshouldered guards marched purposely in.
”

Wow what an amazing story, epic is I guess more the word Im looking for, I read this after watching the movie The Way Back and as is usually the case the book is much better, vastly different yet obviously maintaining the gist of the year long trek across an entire continent to freedom.
As a point of interest or not Colin Farrells tattooed gang character does not exist in the book, Anyways

Slavomir Rawicz wrote this memoir inas a form of therapy to escape the memories that still haunted him, It has lost nothing with time however and remains one of the most incredible journeys of strength, endurance and human spirit youll ever read,

Itsand “Slav” has just spent two years in a Soviet prison, After multiple beatings and interrogations at the hands of the sadistic prison guard “the Bull” he is eventually found guilty of espionage and sentenced toyears forced labour in a Siberian work camp.
These sections were actually some of the most brutal in the whole book

Thus begins his journey, Transferred during the dead of winter Slav somehow survives themile cattle car train ride and subsequent chain gang death march into inner Siberia and campin Yakutsk After enduring starvation, cold, illness and brutality he and six other prisoners escape.


Together they cross an entire continent on foot with nothing more than an axe, a knife, a weeks worth of food and an unbreakable will to live.
Covering some of the most inhospitable conditions on earth they travel out of Siberia and through China, across the Gobi dessert into Tibet and finally over the Himalayas and into British India.
This is where the epic part comes in because their journey is so brutal, so filled with despair and suffering its at times unbelievable and also impossible to put down.


The LONG WALK is written factually and Slav doesnt ever tell us how he feels, he just gives a meticulous account of what is taking place.
However for this type of storytelling it was perfect, Included in thisversion is an afterwards with some of the readers most persistent questions answered, What Slavs life was like after The Long Walk, What happened to the other men Did he ever see them again

This is a story I wont ever forget and I highly recommend.
I mean they walked from Siberia to India, just think about that for a second, Perhaps Ive been missing references to this book and gulags for years, but now I see them everywhere, The night after I finished this book, I laughed uproariously to find this book and its movie being referenced in the new Muppets movie, I think I was the only person in the theater who got the joke when the actress that played Christina in the movie started doing ballet against scene cuts of Muppets treacherously traversing snowy mountains and hot deserts to get to Kermit the Frog in his Siberian gulag.
Or maybe Im the last person to have seen the movie and read the book and the pop culture aspect of it is old news,

I remember my International Relations professor referencing sitelinkAleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his writings about the Russian gulags Russian forced labor prison camps, but it was only a vague reference without much background.
Somehow I missed that Stalin began placing people in gulags inand had already imprisoned,million inmates in gulags by the beginning of World War II with numbers rising as high as,million inmates in thes, The majority of these camps were located in Siberia, And its the journey to and the escape from one of these Siberian gulags to India by way of the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and the Himalayas that is the subject of this book.


The history of this book is a convoluted one, The tale within the book occurs fromand was originally ghost written for the author in, A few years ago, it came out that it was impossible for this to have been the true story of the author since he was released from the gulag into a refugee camp in Iran rather than escaping to India in.
Another man, Witold Gliński, then claimed that the story was true, but that it had happened to him instead,

Regardless of what is true and what is not, its a fascinating story of survival and perseverance, The movie and book became instant favorites of mine, I think that, more than anything, I was amazed that the U, S. allied with Russia in World War II when Stalin was very much still reigning terror down upon those whom he saw as a threat to his rule and spread of communism.
It was a selfish alliance in some ways, but a wise alliance in others, But what was happening in Russia during World War II and afterward isnt depicted in movies and literature nearly as much as the horrors of Hitler.
In toll of lives, Stalin was directly or indirectly responsible for far more than Hitler, Still, I suppose it could have been worse,

I watched the movie version of this book “The Way Back” first, and it left out the horrifying fact that a large part of the journey of Russias political prisoners to Siberia was done on foot.
Prisoners were chained together poorly dressed for the cold weather and made to walkmiles or more with only bread and water to sustain them, Many died along the way, One

thing that struck me in the book was the authors observation that a decade in age made a huge difference in how well a man was able to endure and survive the journey and the work expected up them upon arrival.
I suppose that if youve already endured and survived amile trek, youre more apt to think that amile escape route from Siberia to India might not be impossible.


Once the prisoners escaped into the wilderness, I found it odd that they never found a way of carrying water with them, They could have hollowed out a tree trunk, used the bladder of the deer they killed, rummaged in the garbage of villages they passed for some sort of vessel, etc.
But they never had more than a mug between them for cooking or carrying water, At the point that they realized they were wandering into a desert, surely they would have realized their need for a way to carry water, Its amazing how often they went forward on their journey with simply the hope that theyd eventually encounter food and water if they kept going, I suppose that you do what you have to do, Im still amazed that more of them didnt die in the desert with only the occasional mud puddle and snake to sustain them, And Im amazed, too, that they managed to get to India without a map, Im thinking about how difficult it would be for me to attempt a similarly lengthy journey from here to Alaska on foot with nothing but a general directional idea and no map.
Christopher McCandless version of that journey was harsh enough in sitelinkInto the Wild, Luckily, poor peasants are far more accepting of a ragamuffin group of travelers than your average city dweller, If you saw a band of halfstarved dirty travelers walking down your street, you'd be more likely to lock your doors than kill a lamb to feed them.


Whether this story was completely, partially, or not at nonfiction, it still stands as a grand tale, I highly recommend it to those interested in history and tales of survival, .