The Odyssey of General Anders' Army
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2017
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
By the summer of 1940, a quarter of a million Polish prisoners of war had already been sent to Soviet prison camps. More than a million civilians deemed undesirable by Stalin were packed aboard cattle trucks to the far east of the Soviet Union. Many died on the journey, many more would die in the harshest conditions, toiling, starving and freezing on collective farms or labour camps in Siberia, the Urals or Kazakhstan. But then unlikely salvation came with the opportunity to join Anders' Army.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello from the BBC World Service and welcome to the latest edition of the |
| 0:05.0 | documentary podcast. Every week we bring you a range of stories from our |
| 0:09.8 | presenters and reporters across the world. |
| 0:13.0 | If you have the time, please rate the documentary on your podcast app and leave us a comment. |
| 0:18.1 | Let us know what you think. |
| 0:21.0 | When I first came to the fishing port of Anzai on the Caspian coast of Iran 15 years ago, |
| 0:26.0 | it was in search of a story that I've been following ever since. |
| 0:30.0 | I'm Monica Whitlock, and this is the Odyssey of Anders I'm Monica Whitlock and this is the Odyssey of Ander's Army. |
| 0:36.0 | We've come into an enclosed shrine. |
| 0:40.0 | It's a very desolate set of broken glass and earth covering up the writing. |
| 0:45.0 | What days in 1942 on this lab? |
| 0:49.0 | 1942, 1942, 1948, 29th, 30th of August 1942, each a little tablet with a name and just the same days |
| 1:00.1 | in 1942. |
| 1:01.1 | There are hundreds and hundreds under the cypress trees. Anna |
| 1:06.6 | Vander Joseph. 639 white stone graves of men, women and children born in Poland. |
| 1:16.0 | Why had they died thousands of kilometers from home within just a few days of each other? |
| 1:21.0 | I'd seen other lost unexpected graves in Central Asia in the |
| 1:25.6 | desert in the mountains in Samarkand and in Tashkent where I worked for the BBC. |
| 1:30.4 | These haunting fragments are part of a far bigger story than I'd ever imagined. |
| 1:35.8 | I try not to think about it. |
| 1:38.1 | That was, I went through, that is behind me, and I live from day to day now because it's too upsetting to talk and |
| 1:47.0 | to remember these things. |
... |
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