Exiled to Siberia

Rating:
Summary: Brings dark times and events vividly to life
Review: Exiled To Siberia: A Polish Child's WWII Journey is the engaging biography of a ten-year-old Polish boy deported by the Soviets at the outbreak of World War II. From Henryk Birecki's childhood in a Polish village to his ultimate integration into American society after the war, the reader is treated to a candid and informative story of the hardships and cruelties brought about by the forcible deportation of Polish men, women and children to the bleak and hazardous interior of the Soviet Union. Thousands of Poles died during transport and in the penal and forced labor camps, remote settlements, and the Kolkhozes to which they were banished. After the end of the war Henryk and his sister made it out of the Soviet Union (where his mother died), through Iran and Iraq, then Mexico, and finally to America. Exiled To Siberia is sobering reading and brings those times and events vividly to life for new generations of readers to know and understand the inhumanity and tragedy that afflicted the civilian populace of Eastern Europe during those dark and deadly days.

Rating:
Summary: A facinating perspective on a heartbreaking story
Review: This story of the forgotten victims of WWII is told from a unique perspective. Two friends--the author and the subject--were personally touched by the war in very different ways. One, a german child, victimized only by the disemination of misinformation and, the other, a polish child, victimized both physically and psychologically, enslaved by the Russian allies, separated from family, seizes the opportunity to search for better life for himself and his sister. The author artfully intertwines history and real life experiences. The story is, in many parts, heartbreaking and, in all parts, facinating.

Rating:
Summary: A facinating perspective on a heartbreaking story
Review: This story of the forgotten victims of WWII is told from a unique perspective. Two friends--the author and the subject--were personally touched by the war in very different ways. One, a german child, victimized only by the disemination of misinformation and, the other, a polish child, victimized both physically and psychologically, enslaved by the Russian allies, separated from family, seizes the opportunity to search for better life for himself and his sister. The author artfully intertwines history and real life experiences. The story is, in many parts, heartbreaking and, in all parts, facinating.