Gulag to Spitfire

A Polish Serviceman's Fight to Survive in the Second World War

The story of one man’s escape from Stalin’s genocide to heroism in the skies

Stalin is quoted as saying ‘One man’s death is a tragedy, a thousand deaths is a statistic’. This is the story of a man who was determined to be neither.

Kazimierz Tomasz ‘Tomek’ Hubert was 17 when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. Despite his young age, he was quickly deported to the Vorkuta Gulag in the Arctic Circle, for the crime of being the son of a military governor. Here he would survive torture, starvation and even the threat of cannibalism, before he managed to escape and set off on a 6,000km walk to freedom.

In this moving tale of endurance against all odds, Andrew Hubert von Staufer traces his father’s footsteps from the gulags of Siberia to flying Spitfires in air battles against the Luftwaffe. This is a remarkable account of the Second World War and its long-reaching impact.

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