‘The plight of refugees’
Escape from Siberia, Escape from Memory: An Odyssey Across Two Oceans & Nine Countries to Arrive Home
by Paul Wojdak
Victoria: FriesenPress, 2024
$32.99 / 9781039196865
Reviewed by Matthew Downey
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The plight of refugees fleeing the chaos of war is all too familiar a sight on the fringes of history. In recent times it’s the image of thousands upon thousands of faces scattered alive and dead along the makeshift routes crossing into Europe, Britain, and the United States. It is easy to build a sympathetic distance from the anonymous crowds, who are often from nations without statehood, fleeing conflicts many Westerners are only vaguely aware of. At times, certain stories can break through the wall of complacency to instill humanitarian outrage. This happened in 2015, when the image of a drowned Syrian toddler, washed up on a Turkish beach after having escaped his country’s civil war, went globally viral. The individual tragedy of that photograph emphasized the human story at the centre of every refugee crisis. In Escape from Siberia, Escape from Memory, Paul Wojdak uncovers just such a story in his own family history. His father, Pavel, was also a young child at the centre of a mass refugee crisis spurred on by the chaos of civil war. Pavel survived, though countless others in his situation did not. Rather than the now familiar refugee routes across the Mediterranean Sea, English Channel, or US-Mexican border, Wojdak’s story revolves around the frigid weary path along the Trans-Siberian railway during the 1917-1922 Russian civil war. As an exploration of the generational effort required to process the trauma of refugeehood, this book is a testament to the ability for human connection to transcend the limitations imposed by war, nationality, and time.
Wojdak begins by introducing the reader to the complacent mystery that hung over his familial life as he grew up. His father Pavel was a Polish veteran of the Second World War, born in Siberia, who fought with the British Army’s legendary 2nd Polish Corps in the Italian campaign. Though he would rarely even mention his past, Wojdak’s father would sporadically allude to its complicated nature. One particular scene involves Pavel serenading a Japanese handyman with Japan’s national anthem, much to the surprise of his son. This book represents the sum of Wojdak’s attempt to investigate the life’s story his father was unable to tell him.
As Pavel’s story is uncovered, it does turn out to be an extraordinary one. Pavel was born into the substantial Polish community in Siberia during the early 20th century, which was largely made up of nationalist exiles. Building on the little information that was given by Pavel, Wojdak pieces together a probable image of his father’s upbringing based of the testimonies of other surviving Polish-Siberian refugees. In the wake of the First World War, while Russia was tearing itself apart in civil war, the rise of a Polish nation state inspired the efforts of a nationalist humanitarian group to comb the ruined cities along the trans-Siberian railway for Polish refugee children. As warlords, partisans, and intervening international forces battled over strategic sections of the railway in brutal conditions, these Polish refugees made their ways through the relative safety of Manchuria to Vladivostok, and then to Japan. From Japan, the refugees were taken across the United States and finally to Poland. This promising new start in a new homeland would crumble within two decades, as many of Pavel’s cohort of Polish-Siberian refugees were coming into young adulthood, with the German-Soviet invasion and bisection of Poland and the onset of the Second World War.
Wojdak intersperses his book with sections devoted to explaining the historical contexts of Pavel’s story. This is, at face value, a useful addition to the biographical narrative’s structure. Wojdak organizes his writing so that the reader is discovering the new information with the author as he concurrently relates his experiences researching. Alongside that narrative, summaries of events related to Polish nationalism, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War are injected to keep the reader abreast. There are, however, some unfortunate flaws in these attempts to dip into historical writing. For instance, Wojdak tends to cite Wikipedia articles alongside scholarly works. As well, there are several cases of mixed-up historical terminology – such as references to Allied and Axis forces in the context of the First World War. Such mistakes unfortunately weaken the author’s attempts to delve into historical commentary, such as when he postulates that Britain neglected to support Polish independence because of the machinations of the Cambridge Five spy ring.
Where this book is strongest is in the way it takes the reader alongside its author on a journey of personal reflection and globetrotting research. Having been introduced to Wojdak’s father, and the information which the author thought he knew, the reader is kept engaged with new revelations about the veracity, or lack thereof, of key aspects of Pavel’s past. Notably, Pavel’s history of military service is shown to be much more complicated than the author had previously thought. Having been told that his father had served with the British Army’s Polish Corp in North Africa, Wojdak postulates how his father could have escaped Poland during the early days of the war, making his way through the Balkans towards British Palestine, as many Poles did. However, after digging through British and German records, Wojdak discovers that his father had in fact served in the Wehrmacht until defecting to the Polish Corps later during the Italian campaign. Pavel’s stories about North Africa had been false. Wojdak is quite effective at conveying the sense of emotional confusion that this new information brings. He is quick to lay out his attempt to understand the reasons behind his father’s complicated relationship with personal history, delving into an analysis of his distressful experiences. As such, Wojdak maintains a certain level of interest with the introduction of new twists to the narrative of his research without trivialising the subject matter of his father’s considerable trauma.
Despite the flaws in its historical commentary, Escape from Siberia, Escape from Memory is engaging as a personal reflection on family history and cultural identity. In the modern age of data accessibility (and commodification), companies offering DNA tests and Ancestry records have made the topic of family history more fashionable than ever. Wojdak’s book clearly endeavours to stand apart as a deeper look into the underlying value of family history. This effort is made even more powerful with the book’s reveal that Pavel was not the author’s biological father. This book accordingly relates how attachment to family, nation, and culture are not necessarily determined by blood. Keeping in mind the muddled and often combative politics over refugees that have largely characterized the last decade, past stories like Pavel’s are indeed powerful. For some, belonging somewhere comes naturally; for others, it is their life’s work.
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Matthew Vernon Downey is an independent writer and researcher based out of Victoria, B.C.. He has degrees from UVic (BA hons) and the London School of Economics (MSc). [Editor’s note: Matthew Downey has also reviewed books by Carol Anne Hilton, Ivan E. Antak, Thomas F. Pedersen, Tim Martin, M. Wylie Blanchet, and Jonathan Manthorpe for The British Columbia Review. He has also contributed an essay on the subject of Amor de Cosmos.]
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The British Columbia Review
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Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster