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Two weeks ago I wrote a story about three young Poles, Bartosz Malinowski, Filip Droszdz and Tomasz Grzywaczewski, who had done an extra-ordinary Expedition from Yakutsk to Calcutta. They floated 2200 kilometers down the Lena River, trekked 1000 kilometers alongside the eastern Baikal Lake shore, followed by 300 kilometers of horse riding and finished off 4500 kilometers on a bicycle through Gobi Desert to Calcutta in India. Basically to put emphasis on the famed Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, who has been made into a bestselling book and will now be filmed by Hollywood. They, among many other authorities, claim that it wasn´t Slavomir who did the walk, but another Pole named Witold Glinski. Once their story was published, well, I have spent a lot of my time trying to handle all the mail which has poured in, for and against Witold Glinski. Opinions have also been made on my last blog report here, see the comments. So, I have asked Tomasz Grywaczewski to write and prove his point for Witold Glinski. I have also asked Richard Rawicz to prove them wrong.

Long Walk to freedom

by

Tomasz Grzywaczewski

The pure facts

“You must follow your own path”.

We heard these words one March afternoon in the small cottage somewhere in the very far end of Cornwall Peninsula. The man who said them indeed had chosen his own way and made one of the most epic escapes in world history.  His name was Witold Glinski.  He told us an absolutely amazing story which began in the 1940’s.

On the remote North of Siberia, seven prisoners got out from Soviet labor camp (lagier) in Yakutia. Walking on foot, they escaped to Calcutta in India. They fled during a snow blizzard and crossed around 7.000 km through one of the most inhospitable parts of, not only Asia, but the whole world. They forced their way through the Siberian taiga, the Gobi Desert, the Tibetan Plateau and at last the Himalayas. The group of seven came from diverse backgrounds.  Four were Poles, one American, one Ukrainian, and one Yugoslavian but only four people reached their goal. Three Poles people died in the Gobi and on top of the World staying forever among the Asian wilderness.

This extraordinary story was described by another Polish former GULAG prisoner Slawomir Rawicz. His book entitled “The Long Walk. The True Story of a Trek to Freedom”(1950), with the help of English journalist from the “Daily Mail” Ronald Downing, turned out to be an overwhelming success. It became a bestseller, especially in the USA and UK.  The book was published with a few million copies and it was translated into twenty five languages. Even today “The Long Walk” is regarded to be on the most famous book ever written by Polish author.

However, there is one problem: Rawicz wrote the book as his memories. Simply, he claimed that he escaped for Lagier. For four decades nobody doubted his truthfulness. But in 2006, after Slavomir Rawicz’a death, BBC reporters found out the documents that clearly show that indeed the “Long Walk” author was imprisoned in Lagier but he could not have escaped from it because he was released on the basis on so called Sikorski – Majski agreement (settlement between Polish Government in Exile and USSR authorities).

Doubts grew bigger and bigger. It started to become obvious that the whole tale about the Great Escape was imagined and then suddenly, another journalist John Dyson from Reader’s Digest meet by accident Witold Glinski the man who said to be the real hero of “The Long Walk”. Dyson, as a journalist investigated and concluded that Glinski was not a liar after all, Glinski indeed escaped from Siberia and reached India.  Dyson based his theory inter alia on the report of British intelligence (MI 5) officer Rupert Mayne, who was serving at that time in Calcutta and who strongly, claimed that Mayne was interrogating the group of people who told the same story as Glinski.

These are the facts. But what about us and our project “Long Walk Plus Expedition”?

The expediton

It is true that “The Long Walk” was worldwide bestseller and indeed it was almost everywhere except in Poland. In our country almost no one has ever heard abut the Great Escape. The book could not be published during the communistic era and after the collapse of totalitarian regime, no one was interested in publishing it. Eventually, the very small circulation was printed by a little publishing house and it occurred that readers were absolutely not interested in reading it.

This year the Hollywood movie “The Way Back” (directed by Peter Weir) is going to be released. This incredible escape is probably going to become famous once again. But what if history repeats itself? Will it be popular everywhere with the exception of Poland?  I thought no we have to do something to remind people in Poland and around the world that the leader of the escapees was a Polish hero. We wanted to show a fascinating part of our history cannot be forgotten.

So we did it. We organized expedition on the trails of prisoners and traveled by boats, horses, bicycles and finally on foot the distance from Yakutsk to Calcutta. We had to challenge rapid rivers, thick taiga forest, thousands of mosquitoes and midges. We were suffering hungry in remote Barguzinskie Mounatians and dying from horribly thirst in the Gobi desert. We fought hurricane winds and high elevations when cycling through Tibet. We encountered dozens of extremely friendly people. On the other hand, we experienced extremely dangerous forces of nature. Somehow we touched the travels of our heroes. Of course, our situation was incomparably better, we were well-equipped, physically prepared and we a good idea about the regions on our route.  Still we managed to feel the inhuman reality of loneliness traveling across Asia and we proved that such an escape was extremely difficult and a demanding challenge, but still a possible one.

During last six months we also had an opportunity to compare content of “The Long Walk” with the reality. We discovered that there are a lot of mistakes in Rawicz’s book. I do not want to make a register of errors but some of them are so obvious that I just have to mention them. First of all Mongolia is still a nomadic country and definitely it was even more nomadic half a century ago. For centuries the most common Mongolian shelter is “ger” – round movable tent. When Mongols move looking for the new grasslands for their herds they just fold their tent and change living place. Contrary to Rawicz’s opinion houses with flat roofs were popular in Tibet but not in Mongolia…

The Gobi desert is not just a big dune. It’s not Lawrence’s style Sahara with sandy mountains glittering in the sunshine. In its biggest parts it is flat, rocky plain without plants and extremely little inhabited. But Gobi is also one of the most diverse deserts in the world. There are also deep grassy gorges, semi-deserts and high mountains. But it is not possible to walk through Gobi for a week or two without any water supplies. Temperatures there reach 55°C degrees and in such conditions traveler gets dehydrated very quickly and is dead after two/three days. We were drinking three bottles of water a day and in spite of it we were getting dehydrated extremely quickly. Our noses were bleeding, lips cracking and our minds totally focused on two simple things: water and shade which can protect us from the burning sun.  Water is essential for survival.

The Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world with famous colossuses: Qomolangma, Annapurna and Kanchanjunga; the land of eternal snow and steep, rocky ridges. Summits that have become the obsession for dozens of adventurer souls with whom many died trying to reach their dreams. When British mountaineer George Mallory was asked: “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest”, he simply replied: “Because it’s there”. He vanished during this attempt but the question if he was able to conquest the peak is remains open. “The Long Walk” descriptions of going over the Himalayas are the literary record of the mythological idea of mystical Roof of The World.

There is myth and there is reality. In fact, it is possible to cross the Himalayas without any climbing. There are of course huge inaccessible summits but at the same time there are also wide, vast passes that can be reached, using the modern word, trekking. The Nathu La Pass between Tibet and Indian Sikkim has been a caravan route for hundreds of years. Over 3,000 of British Soldier, commanded by colonel Younghusband, crossed it during the British Expedition to Tibet. If they could do it why should it have been a problem for the small group of seven wanderers? We cycled through the Himalayas and surprisingly it was one of the easiest parts of our journey. Tibet itself with its hurricane winds, low temperatures and constant uphill roads was much more challenging.

So as for the Gobi, Mongolia, the Himalayas –we were there, we saw it, we experienced it. And I can say that, to my disappointment, at least this part of the “Long Walk” was written by somebody who has never been there…

The meetings

Tomasz Grzywaczewski - inhabitant of Lodz, law student out of reason, journalist and traveler out of passion.

It requires a deep, professional knowledge to properly understand the meaning of evidence gathered in the case of Rawicz/Glinski dispute. To my mind evidence about Slavomir Rawicz and also the serious mistakes in the book itself clearly support the theory that he did not escape from the GULAG. Nonetheless it is unquestionable merit of Rawicz that thanks to his book the whole world has heard about Long Walk. If he had not written it, maybe we would have never known about Great Escape.  As for the author of “The Long Walk”, his contribution was to publicize this incredible story.

On the other hand, I met Witold Glinski at his home in UK. I made an interview-documentary movie about him for Polish public TV.  We were talking with Glinski for three days, asking him many, many questions trying to find out if he was telling the truth. It occurred that his story was very coherent and full of details that seem to be difficult to process. Moreover, his speech was extremely emotional and it was obvious that he must have been personally engaged in this story.

It is important to stress that he is very old and also bed-ridden. He has been blind for a few years, and he has recently undergone a major surgery. It is hard to imagine that this man in his age can lie in such a convincing and precise way. Since this meeting I have been strongly convinced that Witold Glinski is the real hero of “The Long Walk”. But… doubts remain. The reason lies in the crucial time frame. There is no evidence which might prove that Glinski is a conman. Although there is also no crucial proof that can definitely settle this argument. We just need the documents which confirm that such a prisoner escaped from labour camp.  They have not been found yet. However, it’s possible that they would never be discovered because a lot of documents from Lagier’s administration vanished or destroyed. It concerns especially the prison camps which were not gathered in bigger “camp groups” (e.g. Siewwostlag governed by Dalstroj Company in Kolyma range) and which functioned like independent units. To the best of my knowledge almost all Lagiers in Yakutia were such an “independent entities” so very often there is no evidence of their existence, not mentioning the register of their prisoners.

In Yakutsk we met with historian from Yakutia University and he gave us the register of Lagiers in the Republic of Sacha with the map of its localization attached. After a few weeks we reached the forgotten labour camp in the middle of taiga which was not indicated or in the register or on the map. How many more unknown Lagiers is waiting deep in the wilderness for a discoverer?  We do not know it and maybe we will never get to know because they disappear extremely quickly destroyed by swamps, weather conditions and seasonal taiga fires.

The History Strikes Back

The Siberia; the distant and dangerous world almost unknown for the most of Europeans but for us, Polish people, Siberia is something more than just a fascinating, sinister Land of the East. It is place where thousand of our compatriots were imprisoned and murdered by the communistic regime. It is some-kind of cursed land. Solzhenitsyn’s “The GULAG Archipelago” has a very tangible meaning for Poles. Actually, this Archipelago is the part of our history therefore it is also a part of us as a nation.

However, I do not like martyrdom and I hate grieving over past tragedies. I prefer to talk about the history in the modern way, show it as a fascinating adventure with great heroes. Especially, taking into consideration that the evil was defeated, USSR collapsed and dozens of nations regained their sovereignty. That is the point of “The Long Walk”. It is great, romantic story about freedom, which should be something familiar to us but is sometimes not. It is not only an adventurous story about surviving in the extreme severe conditions. It is a more universal tale about fighting with the totalitarian system which was designed to change individuals into the slaves. The essence of this story is that these people won! Seven starving and exhausted men defeated the whole NKWD machinery of violence.

I am not a historian, and I do not feel qualified enough to evaluate the authenticity of historical documents. In fact, it was not my aim as an explorer to resolve this dispute. “The Long Walk” and Witold Glinski are the symbols of undeniable will of survival who became a free man. They are first of all symbols of Poles, Ukrainians and other nationalities that suffer from tyranny of insane dictators who built the GULAG Archipelago. American journalist, Anne Applebaum says in her book “Gulag”: This book was not written “so that will not happen again” as the cliché would have it. This book was written because it almost certainly will happen again. Totalitarian philosophies have had, and will continue to have, a profound appeal to many millions of people”. I hope that Long Walk Plus Expedition will contribute –even in a small extent, to remind people about the nightmare of totalitarianism. I do not know if it will change anything. Probably it will not, but at least we have tried.

Links:

Long Walk Homepage

Article on ExWeb about their Expedition

Previous article on Mikael Strandberg´s homepage with comments on the subject

Article about Sylvain Tesson, a French adventurer who has done a similar walk.

Discussion at the bottom, the comment page, between Tomasz and Richard Rawicz.

Article by BBC.

Discussion on the net between their families.

Article in the Daily Mirror for Witold Glinski.

Google Answer on the subject.

Tomasz Grzywaczewski – inhabitant of Lodz, law student out of reason, journalist and traveler out of passion. He ate couscous from one bowl with Berbers in the Atlas Mountains and took Mongolian snuff. The press spokesman of Explorers Festival, one of the biggest in the world festivals of mountains, nature and extreme sports. Regular partner of travel sections in newspapers: “Wprost” and “Dziennik. Gazeta Prawna.” Fascinated by treasures of the Solitary Planet which we will never wholly learn, but which we can try to explore. That’s why he “doesn’t waste time, doesn’t wait” and in his reportages tries to describe and understand reality that surrounds us. He may forget his toothbrush, but he will certainly not forget his notebook and camera. He detests routine, and feels the best on the way, when everyday is a new adventure and challenge. In his life and expeditions, in accordance with the words of Robert Frost, from “two roads diverged in a wood” he chooses “the one less traveled by.”

1. Annapurna by Maurice Herzog. This is the way real climbs, real exploration should be done. Before you had set routes and ropes fixed to the mountain. This book presents the enthralling account, by the leader of the French expedition, of the first conquest of Annapurna – at that time, and at more than 8000 metres, the highest mountain ever climbed. It is a story of breathtaking courage and determination against appalling odds. In records of mountaineering, in tales of human endeavour, there is nothing so unforgettable as the account of the descent by the triumphant but frost-bitten men, after the monsoon had broken, through the flooded valleys of Nepal.

Many think this is the best adventure book ever written.....

2. The worst journey in the world by Aspley Cherry-Garrard. This book gave me and Johan Ivarsson great insights into the cold during our Siberian Expedition. One of the youngest members of Scott’s team, Apsley Cherry-Garrard was later part of the rescue party that eventually found the frozen bodies of Scott and three men who had accompanied him on the final push to the Pole. This is his account of an expedition that had gone disastrously wrong. No episode in the history of human endeavour reads more harrowingly than Scott’s last expedition to Antarctica. Scott reached the South Pole in January 1911 to find Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it; then perished with his companions on the way home. ‘Yet, “tragedy”‘, Apsley Cherry-Garrard was to write a decade later, ‘was not our business.’ Cherry-Garrard was just 24, the youngest but one of the team when he joined Scott. Left behind for the final leg, in accordance with Scott’s original plan for a four-man advance, it fell to Cherry-Garrard eight months later to be a member of the search party which discovered their frozen bodies. The experience permanently damaged his mental health. For the rest of his life he was haunted by the fear that, but for what he perceived as an error of judgement on his part, they might have survived. Yet this book, his story of that and earlier expeditions, is in no way self-indulgent or sensationalist. Despite his name, aristocratic birth and classics degree from Oxford, Cherry-Garrard was no arrogant nobleman. Rather, this not especially robust but intelligent man well understood that polar exploration requires a singular fortitude pushing beyond brute strength to what Ranulph Fiennes was later to term mind over matter. Cherry-Garrard’s descriptions of the conditions suffered are rendered all the more diabolical by prose as stark as the landscape traversed. As for hyperbole, the ‘Worst Journey’ of the title in fact refers to an earlier expedition investigating nesting sites of the Emperor penguin. A work of supreme dimension, this masterpiece remains as compelling today as when it was first published 80 years ago.

3. The Heart of the Hunter by Laurens Van der Post. A beautiful book about travels among the Bushmen. In this stirring sequel to “The Lost World” of the Kalahari Laurens van der Post records everything he has learned of the life and lore of Africa’s first inhabitants. He explores the very sources of the Bushmen’s spirit and imagination – their dreams and stories, the legends that guide them and inspire them in their daily battles with that harshest of environments, the Kalahari.

CuChullaine O´Reilly on his famous ride!

4. Arctic dreams by Barry Lopez. An amazingly inspiring account from the northern part of the globe. The European picture of the Arctic is usually of snow and ice: the inhospitability of the terrain and the frigid wastes of the tundra contribute to our incapacity to imagine ordinary life there. In this magisterial book Barry Lopez draws on this hazy understanding of the far north to provide a compelling account of the land and its hold upon the psyche.It is a book which could be compared to Chatwin for its combination of travelogue and poetic vision. Yet the beauty of the prose and the thought-provoking evocations of modern culture’s shifting relationship with the environment are in a league of their own. Here are sparkling descriptions of the lives of caribou, muskoxen, polar bears and narwhals, and extraordinarily moving passages which meditate on the nature of our relationship with the world, the inter-dependence of ideas, desire and science and the possibility of dignity and compassion in the contemporary world.It is a measure of the respect which Lopez has for his subject that his book exemplifies the supreme importance which he ascribes to the ethics of respect in the face of all existential paradox:”There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of a leaning into the light”.

5. Khyber Knights by CuChullaine O´Reilly. A very good friend of mine. It is an account of perilous adventure and forbidden romance in the depths of mystic Asia. A real modern day tale! It is also a book of insights to the human soul. It has everything an adventure book should have!

6. Scott and Amundsen by Roland Huntford. The best book about the race to the South Pole between Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott. It is not much liked by many British, but as somebody who is brought up in snow and cold, and know a bit about polar exploration, I think it is very accurate. Roald Amundsen should have been give much more acclaim for his fantastic life and discoveries. It is a very dramatic book,but gives a very good background on both of them.

Courtesy Robin Davidson. Probably the best account of an adventure I have read written by a female explorer.

7. Tracks by Robyn Davidson. Even though most of my recommended books are about males, most likely because they are described and written in a way that appeals to me and my way to explore, I think that books about adventure and exploration written by women, generally are better as a whole. Women are more honest, lie and brag about themselves much less and are much more emotional. This book as excellent. In every way and should be read by everyone who is thinking about doing adventures and Expeditions. It is a bout her 1700 mile trek with camels across the Western desert of Australia.

8. The voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. I had no idea that Charles Darwin was such a good writer. The book is a must in many ways, since quite a few of his ideas regarding the evolution of mankind began developing here, but it is also a great travel book full of adventures and insights into all these countries that the Beagle passed on its 5 years journey.

Annapurna - Maurice Herzog classical account of the first 8000 meter mountain to be climbed.

9. The incredible voyage by Tristan Jones. Amazing book by an amazing fella. His passage with his boat through South-America is just unbelievable. He is a very good writer and this will be a classic in the future. With a singleness of purpose as ferocious as any hazard he encountered, Tristan Jones would not give up – even after dodging snipers on the Red Sea, capsizing off the Cape of Good Hope, starving on the Amazon, struggling for 3,000 miles against the mightiest sea current in the world, and hauling his boat over the rugged Andes three miles above sea level to find at last the legendary Island of the Sun. And beyond lay the most awesome challenge of all – the tortuous trek through 6,000 miles of uncharted rivers to find his way back to the ocean.

10  Arabian Sands by Wilfried Thesiger. By now, I have read the book many times. It is part poetry, part the meaning of life, but most a great read about his amazing explorations in the Arabian desert, and most of all, in Rub Al-Khali. Thesiger himself sums it up himself, by saying in his foreword:

No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert, the brand which marks the nomad; and he will have within him the yearning to return, weak or insistent according to his nature. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can hope to match.

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