One Star Away
Author | : Imogene Salva |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 272 |
Release | : 2020-07-13 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : 9781706570820 |
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My mother, Ziuta Nowicka, and her family were deported on February 10, 1940 from their home in eastern Poland to a gulag in the Vologda province, in the northern region of European Russia. Months after the so-called "amnesty" was declared, the Nowickis escaped their gulag and made an arduous journey to Kuybyshev, where a Polish embassy was established. It was in Kuybyshev that news arrived via the Polish Red Cross that a kind-hearted Maharaja offered lodging and care for 500 Polish half-orphaned and orphaned children. One Star Away is a fictionalized account of my mother's deportation to the USSR and exile in India, where Ziuta found safe refuge thanks to the generous Maharaja. My mother's experience as a young Polish exile and others like her is a testimony not acknowledged in most histories of World War II. For the survivors, Siberia remains an Inhuman Land of hard labor, starvation, disease and death; however, the hope of freedom and witness of faith are more powerful than oppression and hatred. One Star Away shows that the human spirit is the strongest of forces. As my mother would say: "To understand that is to be truly free."