The Long Walk is an adventure book in the Great Escape genre that tracks the narrator’s escape from a Soviet labor camp and an 11-month trek to freedom through Siberia, China, Tibet and into British India. It comes, however, with more than a dash of controversy: Many travelers familiar with the areas described believe that the book is largely fiction posing as fact.
Objections range from subtle clues — like no mention of the constant winds that rake the Tibetan Plateau and are the most memorable feature of the place — to hard-to-believe sections like trekking for over a week across the Gobi without water to, er, bumping into two Abominable Snowmen in the Himalaya.
Rawicz, who lived in the Midlands of the UK for many years after the war, died in 2004 at the age of 88. Two years later, a detailed BBC investigation furthered the case that the long walk was a big lie. Documents show that Rawicz didn’t escape from the gulag but was released in 1942 as part of a general amnesty of Poles in the USSR. He then rejoined the Polish army. Following the BBC report, Rawicz’s children continued to staunchly defend their father.
Slavomir Rawicz. Photo: Public domain
Someone else’s story?
While most hoaxes are the tall tales of explorers who came up short, there is a strong case that Slavomir Rawicz never even started the adventure. He simply recounted someone else’s great escape story.
In 1941, after escaping from Camp 303, one of Stalin’s gulags south of Yakutsk, a group of seven men and one woman walked 6,500km in 11 months.
Two died as they crossed the Gobi. Two more perished while they trekked through the Himalaya in the depths of winter. Finally, in 1942, they arrived in British India.
Slavomir Rawicz claimed to be one of those men, and The Long Walk was his remarkable account, ghostwritten by journalist Ronald Downing. Released in 1956, it sold over half a million copies, has been translated into 25 languages, and is still in print. It really is one of the great adventure books of all time. If only it were true.
Like other gulags, Camp 303 was a hard labor camp. Death by starvation, cold, or exhaustion was the only way to end your time at 303, aside from escape.
Rawicz’s story describes how he and six other inmates escaped the cruel conditions. After their escape, they walked to freedom in India. Eventually, a patrolling Gurkha noticed their emaciated bodies. They shared where they had come from, had a medical check, and each went their separate ways, never communicating with one another again.
The Tibetan Plateau. Photo: Shutterstock
BBC investigation
It’s an incredible story, but was it true? In 2006, the BBC team found Soviet records which included a statement from Rawicz himself confirming his release as part of an amnesty. He had never made the walk at all. See the BBC News article here.
Then, in 2009, there was a further twist in the tale. A Polish war veteran named Witold Glinski (who died in 2013) claimed that the walk had happened, but that he had done it, not Rawicz.
In a 2009 Reader’s Digest interview, author John Dyson persuaded Glinski to recount details about the walk. Dyson backed Glinski’s claim, but the details don’t add up. Glinski’s age and event chronology make it implausible that he could have been enlisted in the Polish army at the time, and he offered no hard evidence.
Some version of The Long Walk may have happened, but no one can say who was involved. One way to reveal the truth would have been to find the mysterious American known only as Mr. Smith, who was supposedly one of the escapees. This character never surfaced and is almost certainly deceased by now. What is certain is that Rawicz’s version is fiction, but what fiction! The Long Walk is a captivating read with far more questions than answers.
