Inhuman Land: Searching for the Truth in Soviet Russia, 1941-1942 (New York Review Books)

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Description

A classic work of reportage in regards to the Katyń Massacre all through World War II by a soldier who narrowly escaped the atrocity himself.

In 1941, when Germany turned against the us, tens of thousands of Poles – men, women and children, starving, sickly and impoverished ‒ were released from Soviet prison camps, and allowed to enroll in the Polish army being formed within the south of Russia. One of the crucial survivors who made the difficult winter journey used to be painter and reserve officer Józef Czapski.

Army commander-in-chief General Anders assigned Czapski the task of receiving the Poles arriving for military training, gathering accounts of what their fates had been, organizing education, culture, and news for the soldiers, and most importantly, investigating the disappearance of thousands of missing Polish officers. Blocked at each level by the Soviet authorities, Czapski used to be unaware that in April, 1940, the officers had been shot dead in Katyń forest, a crime for which Soviet Russia never accepted responsibility.

Czapski’s account of the years following his release from the camp, the formation of the Polish army, and its arduous trek through Central Asia and the Middle East to fight at the Italian front is wealthy in anecdotes in regards to the suffering of the Poles in the us, quotations from the Polish poetry that sustained him and his companions, encounters with literary figures including Anna Akhmatova, and philosophical thoughts in regards to the relationships between nationalities.

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