This book is at once excellent for its style and clarity, and appalling for its content of brutality. Michael Krupa, born Polish, was accepted by a Jesuit seminary, from which he ran away, before he had taken his final vows, to join the army. He survived the German attack on Poland, only to be arrested on entering the Soviet-occupied half of his country, and packed off – via the Lubianka prison in Moscow – to a labour camp in Siberia. From this too he was able to run away, thanks to his own strength and courage, to luck, and to total strangers who supported him on the run. He now lives quietly in Yorkshire, and has written in old age an extraordinary testimony to the strength of the human spirit when it has to contend with beasts in human form. Read it and admire his strength of heart.
Michael Foot, The Good Book Guide