A POLISH GIRL IN SIBERIA

Kinalska-Pietruska offers a memoir of a Polish survivor of Soviet deportation to Siberia, edited and translated by her granddaughter.

This remembrance shares a riveting account of a lesser-known aspect of the Second World War—the forced exile of Poles and others under the control of the Soviet Union to prison camps in Siberia by train. Kinalska-Pietruska’s story is harrowing in its narration of her struggle to survive amid cold and starvation (“I was seven years old, growing fast and always hungry”), but with a hopeful ending of eventual repatriation, although it came at the price of being forced to become a member of Communist Party. Skrypczak’s afterword chronicles her grandmother’s life in the decades following the ordeal that included a distinguished career in medicine. Although this part of the story has a happy ending, it doesn’t shy from the long-term effects of displacement and family separation (which included Kinalska-Pietruska’s father taking a new wife and starting a new family before learning that his first family was still alive). This book, divided between a remembrance of a Polish survivor and her granddaughter’s account of her subsequent years, is an important account on many levels. As both memoir and history, it raises awareness of an underexplored part of WWII suffering, showing the extent of Soviet victimization of Poles, which had lasting effects on the multiethnic and multicultural dynamic of Poland. In a timely note, Skrypczak reminds readers of the similarities between the Soviet treatment of Poles and the current treatment of Ukrainians by Russia. Overall, this book stands out as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

A moving account of a lesser-known aspect of World War II.