Two Trains from Poland

There were countless shocking accounts of WWII experiences portraying sufferings of innocent civilian victims. In the U.S., most of them focused on Nazi-German atrocities, victims of Holocaust but much fewer on the Soviet Union, a Nazi - German partner in crime, whose offences were whitewashed or underreported. 'Two trains from Poland' is a beautiful and moving story, almost epical account of a little, 6 years old Polish girl from an upper middle class, father a lawyer; mother a university graduate, very literate housewife, a three year old sister and grandparents living nearby. It is a story of survival written 60 years after the events. A midnight knock at her door changed everything for a 6 year old Krystyna Sklenarz. In the middle of the night, a Soviet NKWD (KGB) agent informed her mother that that they are being deported from Poland to Siberia. When asked by her terrified and anxious mother for more details regarding their final destination, the NKWD officer coolly retorted 'you are going to where the devil says goodbye', an old Russian saying needing no further amplification. In her memoirs, Krystyna depicts horror of war from occupation by hostile powers, two years in Siberia, starvation, typhus, life threatening illness in a foreign and hostile country, void of rudimental sanitation and medication, shuttered and disrupted family life, death of her younger sister, an opium den in Persia, mingled with the native aristocracy, learned to speak Farsi, being torpedoed near South Africa, and the arriving in London to live through the Nazi Blitz in the London subway and talking briefly to the Queen. Through it all, Krystyna refused to give up. This is her story this is her journey from the Siberian wasteland, through her struggle to achieve education in a foreign language in only five years, to her entrance into medical school at only 17. The palette of her life has many hues some bright, some dark and hopeless, others funny. Events happened in her life which at times tested credulity. In Teheran in 1942, she was a guest on several occasions in the home of the Shah’s relative and in London, the Queen spoke to her a few words. Krystyna recounts all of this in this tale of courage and perseverance, discussing her stubborn refusal to allow the Nazis or Soviets to defeat her and recounts her later journey and struggles as a female striving to be a doctor when women weren’t supposed to be doctors. The surviving little girl grew up and became a principled and caring woman, whose life taught her self-reliance and dismissed outright any dependence on immediate relief of stress or adversity by artificial intervention through counseling, support groups, drugs legal or illegal, the devises many rely on in our society used to relieve stress and life disappointments. Doctor Sklenarz was an extraordinary woman weathering life in Soviet imprisonment , in exile , in then man-dominated field of medicine, winning admiration of her peers, patients, acquiesces, and love of the entire family scattered through the world.. Through out the entire fourteen months of struggle with painful terminal cancer, Krystyna was true to her character and principles, bearing her fate with dignified stoicism, endurance and without complaints. With her attention to detail and vivid recollection of events, Krystyna takes the reader through a remarkable journey in history and of the human spirit.