The Ice Road: An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom

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The Ice Road: An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom

by Stefan Waydenfeld

4.25 · rating details · 12 ratings · 6 reviews

In a forgotten chapter of history, 1.5 million Polish civilians-arbitrarily arrested by Stalin as enemies of the people following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939-were deported to slave labor camps throughout the most inhospitable forests and steppes of the Soviet Union. The Ice Road is the gripping story of young Stefan Waydenfeld and his family, deported b...more

Hardcover, 406 pages

Published February 25th 2010 by Aquila Polonica (first published 2010)

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Aug 04, 2010

Wanda rated it

The Ice Road is a tour de force that takes the reader into a history that is not well known in the U.S. It is the first person account of Stefan Waydenfeld, a Pole, whose family (the Wajdenfelds) is deported to the Soviet Union, simply because they were Poles, educated and hence in need of Soviet re-education. It takes place from the first days of the Nazi invasion of Poland, through the family's deportation to the steppes of Soviet central Asia, through their final journey to join with thousan...moreThe Ice Road is a tour de force that takes the reader into a history that is not well known in the U.S. It is the first person account of Stefan Waydenfeld, a Pole, whose family (the Wajdenfelds) is deported to the Soviet Union, simply because they were Poles, educated and hence in need of Soviet re-education. It takes place from the first days of the Nazi invasion of Poland, through the family's deportation to the steppes of Soviet central Asia, through their final journey to join with thousand of others in Iran (Persia) and General Wadyslaw Anders' army. Stefan later fought with the Polish army at Monte Cassino. Stefan’s family was part of the Polish intelligentsia; his mother was a bacteriologist and his father was a physician and because they found themselves on the east side of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line they managed to escape the Scylla of the Nazis but not the Charybdis of Uncle Joe and his NKVD. In one sense he and his family were very fortunate to be “only” deported as Dr. Wajdenfeld, a Polish army reserve officer, could well have found himself a victim of the Katyn atrocities. Of course, this is not to diminish the suffering that the Wajdenfeld family experienced and the fact that at any time they could have died as did thousands of other Poles, including my own grandparents.
I found myself thinking throughout this tale about what manner of resilience characterized this family, that they survived and that Stefan went on to realize his dream of becoming a physician after the war. Perhaps it was a collective intelligence that lifted them repeatedly out of the well of despair into which our Soviet allies were forever dunking them (an apt metaphor considering a vignette during which Stefan decides to take a dive into a subarctic river, and is nearly paralyzed by its iciness). Perhaps it was the bond of family, lack of rancor, and the power of tenacity and perseverance to overcome whatever challenges a person faces. Perhaps it was the fact that no matter how horrible, enraging and frustrating their situation, Stefan was able to find within it some morsel of wonder and life lessons from which he could learn.
The writing style is fluent, spare and articulate. Waydenfeld’s story unfolds with a pure voice; no judgment or bitterness clouds his telling of the journey into hell and back. It's amazing how little self-pity there is in these pages. The few flashes of strong affect that we see is when the family is denied their Polish nationality because they do not have a “traditional” Polish surname. The Wajdenfeld family were assimilated Jews and considered themselves Poles, yet the documents reproduced in the book which were issued by the Soviets repeatedly have the family’s nationality recorded as Jewish. The fact that Jewish is not a nationality speaks to the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism and the less than subtle attempts at destruction of Jews by declaring them repeatedly as “the other” when outright slaughtering them was not an option.
Waydenfeld never is anything but perfectly honest. In the early part of his narrative, he talks frankly about the intense suffering of ethnic Poles under the Nazis, a fact that has been under-recognized in many narratives of World War II. As the child of families that suffered both at the hand of the Nazis and the Soviets, I appreciated his calling attention to their suffering and the best that it brought out in the tenacious Poles. I also appreciated the acknowledgement of the betrayal of Poland and Eastern Europe by their “allies” at Iran and Yalta. To paraphrase one of the participants, these events should forever live in infamy. Too often they are portrayed not as a betrayal, but as realpolitik and the unavoidable cost of war.
Waydenfeld sprinkles his narrative with slices of humor, which relieves any pall of grayness that might overwhelm his story. This description of the linguistically gifted Andropova’s “virtuoso performance” when cursing out the NKVD colonel was a delight that made me laugh aloud:
“First, she told the colonel what she thought about him in general and about the intimate parts of his anatomy in particular. My knowledge of Russian proved inadequate to comprehend it all. Then she invoked his parents, his grandparents and the generations preceding them, their anatomy and their physiology, with special attention to their body prominences and orifices, not to mention their involvement with other zoological species.”
How wonderful is that?!
Waydenfeld finds humanity among the “enemy” and treachery among “friends” but rather than enmity toward the latter, his attitude is always one of sorrow that these comrades saw fit to betray their fellow humans. Indeed the entire book is infused with a kind of ineffable sadness about war in general and its inhumane sequelae in particular.
People may read this and see one glaring weakness, but that weakness is also its greatest strength. It is that Waydenfeld avoids harsh judgments. Time and again I would read passages that made me want to throttle the obtuse or cruel perpetrator of some behavior. I wanted Stefan to tear into them for their inhumanity. But he doesn’t, and this, of course leaves readers free to form their own judgments without being told what to think. Waydenfeld has enough respect for his readers to expect that they will draw their own conclusions. This respect makes for a stronger book than if he had beat his readers over the head with snide asides about the workers’ paradise or such that I have read in the memoirs of others.
During Stefan’s description of medicine I was reminded a bit of Abraham Verghese’s (see Cutting for Stone) love of his chosen profession. Both of them have a deep feeling for the power of healing and are unashamed to tell us what a gift it is that they have been privileged to be given. The fact that Stefan overcame many obstacles (language, logistics, temporal, bureaucratic) to follow in his father’s footsteps and finish medical school is inspiring.
An old truism has to do with the idea that what does not kill you makes you stronger. This maxim is exemplified in this story of coming of age and survival despite all odds. Stefan and his family often went for days without proper nourishment, clothing, and shelter. They became nomads and rootless but still formed enduring friendships. They relied on one another, and made plans for the future. This book is a beautifully written and unforgettable testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit.
I recommend this without reservation.(less)

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Dec 05, 2010

Amy rated it

Shelves: arcs-or-review-copy

An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom

Sticking with the apparent theme of Stalinist Russia and its aftermath, I found this memoir fascinating. It’s always more interesting to read a historical event in the voice of someone who experienced it, and the author Stefan Waydenfeld describes his experiences with detail and yet without bitterness.

Waydenfeld was the son of a doctor and a biologist, and their small ...more

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Nov 09, 2010

Tim rated it

Shelves: history, memoir, world-war-ii

Good fortune -- luck -- manifests itself in a variety of ways. Frequently, just how lucky we are comes only with hindsight and even then we may not realize just what contributed to a serendipitous result. Yet the extent of a person's fortune may well be a matter of perspective, much like the adage about regretting having no shoes until seeing the person with no feet.

Normally, a person wouldn't think a memoir about being forced into frozen labor camps during World War II is the type o...moreGood fortune -- luck -- manifests itself in a variety of ways. Frequently, just how lucky we are comes only with hindsight and even then we may not realize just what contributed to a serendipitous result. Yet the extent of a person's fortune may well be a matter of perspective, much like the adage about regretting having no shoes until seeing the person with no feet.

Normally, a person wouldn't think a memoir about being forced into frozen labor camps during World War II is the type of work that examines luck. Yet Stefan Waydenfeld's The Ice Road: An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom shows the full range of good and bad fortune and how capricious it can be.

Waydenfeld was a teenager in Otwock, Poland, a city not far from Warsaw, as the European continent moved toward the outbreak of World War II. The son of a medical doctor and a medical bacteriologist, Waydenfeld enjoyed the benefits and opportunities afforded by a comparatively comfortable life, one he even terms "idyllic." That would end rather abruptly when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and become even worse when the Soviet Union invaded the country from the east 16 days later. Waydenfeld's father, who had served as a medical officer in the Polish Army, was mobilized before the German invasion. Five days after the German invasion, Waydenfeld, then 14, set off on foot with friends toward a mustering point to the east to join the Army. He and his friends wouldn't join the Army on their trip -- and he would not see his home for another eight years.

Through a fortunate turn of events, Waydenfeld's father located him when he took shelter with another family. And, by chance, his mother joined them just as they were going to attempt to return to Otwock to find her. Yet the Waydenfelds faced a dilemma: try to return to the portion of Poland occupied by Germany or stay in what was now the Soviet occupied section. They ending up staying in the Soviet-controlled area. Ultimately, although not technically prisoners, hundreds of Poles were deported in crammed cattle cars to Siberian labor camps in 1940. The Waydenfelds ended up in Kvasha, a camp in far western Siberia with a subarctic climate. "Here you shall live," they were told.

Kvasha was not a prison camp. There was housing and food available. Yet survival depended on working in the great forests of the area cutting and removing timber. The phrase frequently heard from the Soviet officials at the camp was, "He who does not work, does not eat." Although in his teens, Waydenfeld performed a wide variety of difficult tasks in the camp. The worst, which gives the book its title, was when he and his father were part of a crew charged with maintaining "the ice road." The road consisted of iced ruts on which sleds would transport felled trees in the midst of the winter. Maintenance required traveling up and down the road gathering water from the adjoining river and resurfacing the ice in the ruts. Often working at night, the task not only involved working outdoors in sub-zero temperatures but often being coated with ice as a result of the water they were required to spread on the road. The physical burdens and distress of the work almost beggars the imagination.

After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviets released the Poles, although they were limited to places within the Soviet Union and were responsible for their own transportation. Although this meant the Weydenfelds would leave Kvasha, it also embarked them on a journey of thousands of miles through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan by rail, on foot and by truck. They scavenged local markets for food and took up housing where available, aided by the senior Weydenfeld's ablity to occasionally find employment thanks to his medical degree. The family and numerous others eventually found passage to Tehran and outside Soviet and German influence.

Waydenfeld recounts events with an excellent eye for detail, both in terms of events and the family's surroundings. Some readers might even wonder about the extent of the detail given that he did not keep a diary and only started making notes of his experiences some 15 years after. Regardless, The Ice Road tells a compelling story about the treatment of the Poles during World War II, an aspect of the conflict that is often overlooked. Additionally, the book includes a look at the Polish deportations and the formation of a Polish Army corps, which Waydenfeld joined once outside Soviet control.

Despite the hardships it recounts, The Ice Road is a story of good fortune in that the Waydenfeld family survived. Yet a couple items in his recounting show just how fortuitous they may have been. For example, in May 1940 the Waydenfelds stood in line for a German repatriation train that would have returned them to Otwock and the part of Poland occupied by the Germans. The family ahead of them in line filled the quota of returnees and they were told to go back to where they were staying and wait for the next repatriation train. There was never another and they were deported to Siberia.

Or they could look back just a bit more. In May 1939, the Waydenfelds took a cruise to the Mediterranean. They picked it over one slated to go to New York City in August 1939. That ship was in New York City when the war broke out -- and the passengers spent the war in the United States.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie.)(less)

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Nov 28, 2011

Gary rated it

Recommends it for: Soviet history buffs

At the risk of being redundant, another excellent addition to the genre, recommended heartily for those who tend to be interested in it. A bit different from others I've read in that it chronicles the experiences of a family rather than an individual. As well, an important work in exposing the despicable treatment at that time of the Poles by the Russians.

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Jun 26, 2011

Jackie rated it

amazing nonfiction account of life in Siberian penal colony and escape

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Jun 06, 2011

Linda rated it

This is a sleeper book that gives a vivid personal account of the Waydenfeld family's courageous survival through a Stalinst labor camp in Siberia to their eventual freedom from a divided Poland. Keep an old Atlas handy to follow their path.

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About Stefan Waydenfeld

Dr. Stefan Waydenfeld was born 1925 in a suburb of Warsaw, Poland, to a successful and well-educated professional family. Waydenfeld’s father was a medical doctor who specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis in children and young adults, and his mother was a bacteriologist specializing in clinical pathology.

Waydenfeld was 14 years old when World War II began with the Nazi German i...more

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