Surviving Siberia : the diary of a Polish girl, 1939-42

In September 1939 the Germans and the Russians descended on Poland.

Country houses and churches were stripped of everything of value.

The people were terrorised, tormented and often murdered. Jozefa Eva Rataj was a young woman of eighteen when the Russians came to her village.

With her parents, her six brothers and sisters and many of their friends and neighbours, Jozefa was taken to the railway station, where they were loaded on to cattle trucks, sixty in each.

There was one small window and they were packed so tightly they could hardly move. Singing the hymn 'Under Your Protection', they set off through the night, destined for the wastes of Siberia and unimagined horrors.