‘One morning in February – it was five a.m., dark, snow up to the waist – they came for us. I was . . . well, my father was not there of course, so I was the man of the house, if you like . . .’

‘But – what about your brother? You said you had an elder brother?’

‘Pawel, yes. But he was in the army. Polish army – we call it the Home Army. So he wasn’t there. We heard after a long time – almost by chance, when everyone is asking for news – that he was killed in western Poland, fighting the Germans, around about that time, I think.

‘God!’ she murmured. It was all too much for her to find any words.

‘That morning, the girls were screaming, and Russian soldier in long coat – his gun was pointing at my mother’s head. My sister, Ewa, shouted something and he hit her round the face with the back of his hand – his glove. Slap! She fell to the floor. They told us: Take what you can carry, take food, and put on the cart. We went to the railway station and eventually everyone – a big crowd of people – was put in the train. It was a train for animals – you know, cattle. We were many people in one truck: a hole in the middle of the floor for, well, for you to do your business. When someone wanted to go, people turned their backs, maybe held up a coat. It took six weeks, at least. It was winter; very cold. At night we all slept close together, family in a group. If you rested your head on the side of the carriage, your hair would freeze to it. A lot of people had to have their heads cut free, so there was hair left on the walls . . . People were sick. One lady had a baby in our truck. Can you imagine? When it was born there was no sound, no cry. The guards . . .’ He hesitated. ‘They take it and throw it out into the snow.’

Katie gasped, a hand going to her mouth.

‘All the dead, it was like this . . . Not much food, not much water . . . So, we are taken to the north, to a place in Russia near Archangelsk, to a camp for logging.’

‘Logging?’

‘Of course. They need wood for everything: for railway, for building – all these barracks, huts for their slave labour, for one thing – everything they make, they have the whole of the taiga forests. I was sent with the men. We cut the trees. The women and children gather branches, and my mother had some cooking work. I see them at night. Again, little food. Soup is just cabbage water. People are getting very sick – some have chicken blindness, I think they call it beri-beri. Some of the men, when the sun started to go down, we had to guide them back to the huts because they went blind; they are stumbling, falling.