In the grim winter of 1939, Slavomir Rawicz, a Polish cavalry officer, was arrested by the Russians as a spy. He was then twenty-four years of age and had been married for only a few weeks. Taken first to Kharkov jail and then to the notorious Lubyanka prison in Moscow he was subjected to repeated interrogations and diabolically brutal methods of torture. After a mockery of a trial he was sentenced to twenty-five years' forced labour and with 4,000 other prisoners, was trundled across Russia and Siberia by cattle train to Irkutsk from where he was made to march in chains for 1,000 miles to a camp near the Arctic Circle.
On arrival at this desolate camp, Slavomir Rawicz began to plan escape, furtively helped by the commandant's wife, in whom he had confided. With scrupulous care he chose six companions and on a snowy night in April, 1941, they climbed through the wire and made for the south, hiding by day and travelling by night. At the end of the first two months, they had covered 1,200 miles.
Near Lake Baikal they were joined by a young Polish girl of seventeen who had escaped from a forced labour farm. Entering the terrible Gobi Desert they struggled on in the burning heat, suffering tortures of thirst and hunger, on through Inner Mongolia and Tibet, and then across the Himalayas until, in a state hovering between life and death, they reached the Indian frontier and freedom.