Kozłowski

By Jane Rogoyska, Holland House Books, UK
ISBN: 978-1-910688-73-1

Jane Rogoyska is a writer and film maker who has tackled the impact of Katyn Massacre on a witness and survivor, tracing his post war life and experiences in London while trying to come to terms with loss, guilt and painful memory. The chosen storyline and scenario for the story has been meticulously researched and has managed to capture the massacre at Katyn that today remains ‘etched on the heart of Poland’ and post-Cold War politics.

The account opens with Kozłowski along with other Polish prisoners awaiting embarkation on trains for their deportation from Jarmolice in Russia (fictitious) to an unknown destination. Chapter One then shifts to being transported by ship to join the Resettlement Corps in England in the immediate aftermath of war. The very opening pages tackles the uncertainties and issues facing the Poles in exile. Those soldiers who served in the Middle East and Italy in the II Polish Corps and not forgetting the Navy, had survived the harshest of regimes in the Gulags and a punishing transit route out of Russia via Persia (today’s Iran) that resulted in death, starvation and disease.

Julian Hoseason, editor polandinexile.com