Sławomir Rawicz

Sławomir Rawicz (September 1, 1915 – April 5, 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 6,500 km (4,000 miles) south, through the Gobi desert, and over the Himalayas to India. In 2006, records from the former Soviet union including some written by Rawicz himself were discovered 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 [1].

The story of his escaping to India is chronicled in a ghost-written book The Long Walk, whose veracity has always been considered controversial.

The Long Walk

Sławomir Rawicz was born in Pińsk, in Russia (later Poland now Belarus). 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.

By Rawicz's account, 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 he was sent to the Lubyanka prison in Moscow though these details after his arrest have not been validated from soviet sources. 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. Soviet records discovered in 2006 conflict with his account. 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, located 650 km south of the Arctic Circle, to build the camp from the ground up. Neither the existence of Camp 303 nor the records of his trial have been found in Soviet records. Nor have the military records of the camp commander Ushakov or his wife been located.

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. No record of any of these persons has ever been found in any country.

On April 9, 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 they crossed the 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, Krystyna and Makowski died. Others had to eat snakes to survive.

Around October 1941, they claim to have reached Tibet. Locals were friendly, especially when men 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. They also met hairy creatures Rawicz regarded as Yetis. Doubt has been cast on that part of the story as his ghostwriter, Ronald Downing, was a British reporter actively seeking stories of the Yeti.

Rawicz claims the survivors reached India around March 1942, but the date is very much open to speculation. The party claims to have met a patrol of soldiers who have been later thought to be gurkhas but may have been soldiers of the Assam Rifles or even soldiers from the army of Nepal. Rawicz claimed they took them 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 four survivors went their own ways. They never met again. No person in India – military, political or medical – has ever been found who remembers Rawicz.

In 1942 the book states that Rawicz moved from India to Iraq. He then claimed 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 claimed to have spent time recovering in the hospital and teaching in a military school. He further 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. But no military records exist in the Free Polish forces that document the recommendation. No information has ever been produced to suggest that General Anders or Colonel Luzinski ever knew of Rawicz.

Army records suggest 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.

When the book was published, it generated a great amount of activity among those who had served in India during the war years and those who travelled through Central Asia. Many questioned the book then and Peter Fleming claimed in the 1950s to have found military records that contradicted Rawicz's claim that he was in India in early 1942. In 2006, Soviet era records on Rawicz were discovered in Russia and Belarus that contradict the account given in The Long Walk. Some however believe that while Rawicz did not participate in a walk from Siberia to India, that the story of a "long walk" along that route during the second world war is true.

Postwar career

After the war he settled in Sandiacre, Nottingham, England and worked as a school handicrafts instructor and as a cabinetmaker. 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 couple of years later. 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.

See 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

• Obituary written by a friend from the Guardian newspaper
• Dave Anderson's page about Slavomir Rawicz and how he retraced the alleged journey.
• BBC presents new evidence showing that the Rawicz story is untrue