omir was arrested by the
             Soviet secret police, imprisoned, accused of espionage, interrogated,
             tortured and, after being finally convicted, sent to Siberia.
             In the beginning of 1941, after crossing over three thousand miles by
             train, Slavomir entered the "gulag," a Russian prison camp for political
             prisoners, where he was to serve his twenty five year sentence of hard
             In April of 1941, he along with six other prisoners, planned, and
             executed an escape from the prison camp. The group walked more than four
             thousand miles, across frozen Siberia, Mongolia, the barren Gobi desert,
             China, Tibet, and the Himalayan Mountains before reaching northern India.
             In India, Slavomir decided to join the Polish forces fighting with
             the allies in the Middle East. After spending eighteen months in Palestine
             recuperating from his imprisonment and extremely arduous journey, he
             volunteered to join the polish wing of the British Air Force.
             He arrived in England in March of 1944. After the war he re-married
             an English Lady and settled down in England, where he remains living today.
             Slavomir Rawicz wrote his account of his imprisonment, escape, and
             journey in his book, the long walk, in 1956. Ironically, the book has been
             translated into eighteen languages, including Russian, the language that
             served to incriminate Slavomir Rawicz in the eyes of the Soviet secret
             police, and the language of the very oppressors who caused him, and his
             He continues to receive hundreds of letters from readers touched by
             the tragic, yet inspiring, story of his life.
             Slavomir Rawicz worked his way up to be a respected Polish cavalry
             officer in the beginning of World War II. After a short, and, ultimately
             unsuccessful campaign against the German army, Rawicz decided to return to
             his family in Pinsk, in hopes of resuming his life.
             As child of a Polish father and a Russian moth...