Os poloneses, entre nazistas e bolcheviques - Jozef Czapski

INHUMAN LAND
SEARCHING FOR THE TRUTH IN SOVIET RUSSIA, 1941-1942

BY JÓZEF CZAPSKI
Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Introduction by Timothy Snyder

In 1941, when Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and invaded the USSR, tens of thousands of Poles—men, women, and children who were starving, sickly, and impoverished—were released from Soviet prison camps and allowed to join the Polish army being formed in the south of Russia. One of the survivors who made the difficult winter journey was the painter and reserve officer Józef Czapski. After Czapski's release, General Anders tasked him with investigating the disappearance of thousands of missing Polish officers. Blocked at every level by the Soviet authorities, Czapski was unaware that in April 1940 the officers had been shot dead in Katyn forest and elsewhere.

Czapski’s account of the years following his release from the camp and the formation of the Polish Army, and its arduous trek through Central Asia and the Middle East to fight on the Italian front, offers a stark depiction of Stalin’s Russia at war and of the suffering, stoicism, and bravery of his fellow Poles.

"The Polish painter and writer Józef Czapski lived through almost the entire twentieth century as an exception to the rule. A pacifist who became a Polish army officer being deported to a Soviet prison camp in 1939, he was one of very few to survive the Katyn massacre perpetrated by Stalin’s secret police the following year....He was both a patriot and a European in the deepest sense, with friends and family connections across the continent. In this year’s centenary of independence regained, a new generation of Poles in a country at the crossroads must decide whether Czapski’s vision will also be theirs." —Stanley Bill, Times Literary Supplement