Walking the talk? (BBC) {Did Polish POW's trek from Russia to India?}

[eppur_se_muova]

By Hugh Levinson
Producer, BBC Radio 4's The Long Walk

An epic story of human endurance is being challenged. Did wartime prisoners really walk from Siberia to India?

In 1956, a Polish man living in the English midlands published an extraordinary book that became one of the classic tales of escape and endurance.

In The Long Walk, Slavomir Rawicz described how, during the Second World War, he and a group of prisoners broke out of a gulag in the Soviet Union in 1941. They walked thousands of miles south from Siberia, through Mongolia, Tibet, across the Himalayas, to the safety of British India.

The only question is: is it true? From the start, a ferocious controversy has raged about whether anyone really could achieve this superhuman feat. Critics particularly questioned one chapter in the book where the walkers apparently see a pair of yetis.

But The Long Walk was a sensation. It has sold over half a million copies and has been translated into 25 languages and is still in print.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6098218.stm

Be sure to look at the responses posted -- some are quite interesting.

[Mojorabbit]

1. You are right,, the comments

are illuminating. Thanks for posting the article!