Escape from Exile: The True Story of a Woman Who Defied Soviet Terror

By Ewa Kurek

"I felt like a soldier. Was my woman's fight any the less hard or important? Of course, I wasn't going to kill anyone, but I was going to deprive the Soviet Empire of two slaves." On September 1st 1939, Germany invaded Poland from the west; on September 17th, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. In the months that followed, the Soviet authorities began arresting Poles and transporting them deep within Soviet Russia, to Gulag labor camps and exile settlements in Siberia and Kazakhstan. About 1 million Polish citizens were torn away from their homes. This is the true story of Maria Byrska, who was arrested in April 1940 along with her one-year-old boy, Georgie, and shipped off to Kazakhstan in a cattle car. From the moment of her arrest, Byrska resolved to escape at the first opportunity. And escape she did. With Georgie, she made it all the way back to Poland, crossing Russia by truck, train, wagon, and on foot. For this to be possible, she needed determination and intelligence. But these alone were not enough. She needed something more... Years later, Byrska recorded her adventures on audiotape, and from those tapes historian Ewa Kurek wrote the Polish original of this book. The manuscript was smuggled out of communist Poland in 1985 and published in Paris, and later in Poland by underground publishers. This is the first English edition. Ewa Kurek holds a PhD in History from the Catholic University in Lublin. Her books in English include Your Life is Worth Mine - How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-Occupied Poland 1939-1945 ; and Polish-Jewish Relations 1939-1945 .

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0D4QCSVZH
• ISBN13: 9798326140227
• Release Date: May 2024
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 316 Pages
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"