Without Vodka Wartime Adventures In [Paperback]

At the beginning of World War II, Soviet troops arrested Topolski, a 16-year-old Pole, as he tried to sneak over the border into Romania to join the free Polish Army. The "adventures" described here are the ones the author endured over the next two years, as he was shuttled through the Soviet Union's labyrinthine prison system. As Topolski explains, the prisons were an experience in multiculturalism, as Jewish, Ukrainian, Central Asian, Polish and Russian prisoners mixed with others from the Caucasus Mountains. In the prison hierarchy, Poles and Jews were generally more educated, while Armenians, Georgians and Central Asians were often considered untrustworthy thieves and sexual offenders. The author himself used cunning, talentAhe was able to elevate his status by passing as a draftsmanA and faith to keep himself alive. "Despite all that was going on around me, I held fast to my conviction that this was but a temporary reversal of fortune in my life." Topolski, who now lives in Canada, strikes the right balance between despair and humor as he describes the life of a teenager battling to survive. He pulls no punches in depicting the violence and hunger that were parts of daily life, but divulges little bitterness about his time in captivity. Indeed, he even offers some philosophical thoughts. While the book displays an understandable anti-Soviet animus, what emerges is the conviction that individualsAwhether guards or prisonersAcan control their actions, even in the worst of situations.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The refugee literature of World War II benefits with Topolski's contribution, a striking recollection of three years in the gulag. His narrative's outstanding quality is the spare, sharply drawn descriptions of the characters surrounding him, whether benevolent, malevolent, or indifferent. A 16-year-old plane spotter when Poland was partitioned in 1939, Topolski was swept into the stream of thousands of Polish ex-military people deported to the USSR. Teenagers like Topolski deemed too young to be murdered, as about 15,000 Polish officers were on Stalin's direct order, were force-worked on starvation rations--and indeed unrelenting hunger and the perpetual obsession with food unifies the narrative. In league with a shifting constellation of fellow unfortunates, he schemed daily for anything edible, episodes that buttressed his optimism that he would make it through that day, and the next, until fortune changed. The wheel turned with the release of the Poles to form a new army, to reach the Central Asia training bases in which Topolski persevered through the adversity of no papers, no money, and no friends. An amazing odyssey vividly remembered. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"The most absorbing of the 'now it can be told' books I've read by a non-Russian survivor of enslavement in the ussr. It contrasts well with The Long Walk . . . but where the Rawicz story is dour, the Topolski story is vivid, often comic." -- The Ottawa Sun --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

ALEKSANDER TOPOLSKI was sixteen years old on the morning of August 24, 1939, when he was called up for military service. In eight days his native Poland would be invaded by the Germans. Shortly after that, the Russians rolled in under the Hitler-Stalin pact, and when Topolski tried to sneak across the border into Romania, he was captured by Soviet border guards. Thus began a more than two-year-long ordeal through the Soviet Union's outrageously absurd penal system. Writing with an unexpected sense of humor and irony and an almost superhuman capacity for recalling fascinating details, Topolski recounts the fight for survival in the gulag. Mendacious NKVD officers, whimsical pickpockets, ruthless youth gang members, wise political prisoners, Polish patriots, unfortunate Uzbechs and countless other unforgettable characters populate this often raucous odyssey. "But it's not for our brains to ponder these things," someone along Topolski's journey utters, mouthing an old Russian saying, "without vodka you can't figure it out." Ultimately Topolski escapes into Iran to join the Polish 2nd Corps which is being formed there to fight the Germans . . . but that's another story. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"The most absorbing of the 'now it can be told' books I've read by a non-Russian survivor of enslavement in the ussr. It contrasts well with The Long Walk . . . but where the Rawicz story is dour, the Topolski story is vivid, often comic." -- The Ottawa Sun --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

ALEKSANDER TOPOLSKI was born in 1923, the youngest of three children and the only son. He grew up in Pruzana in the Pripet Marshes of eastern Poland and in Horodenka, a small town in the southeastern corner of Poland. Following his two years in Soviet captivity, he joined the Polish Army loyal to the Polish Emigrée Government in London. A graduate in architecture from Manchester University, he practiced in England, Connecticut, Virginia, Puerto Rico, and the West Indies before settling in Canada. He has three grown children and lives with his wife, Joan Eddis, in Chelsea, Quebec. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.