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A life gone topsy-turvy during war Reviewed By Andrew Vowles Special To The Hamilton Spectator

STORY TYPE: Book review LENGTH: Long

Without Vodka

By Aleksander Topolski

McArthur & Company, $21.95

Near the end of this Second World War memoir, the author's newly formed Polish regiment encounters a trainload of Soviet soldiers returning from the front. The emaciated and bloodied Soviets are dumbfounded at the Poles' fighting trim. "A Polish Army dressed like staff officers, well fed. The devil take it! They always lie to us! The sons of bitches. But it's not for our brains to ponder these things. Besides it's dangerous. Without vodka you can't figure it out."

Knowing what state Aleksander Topolski and his comrades had been in mere months earlier -- and indeed, what dire straits they're in during most of this engrossing book -- readers will give their heads an ironic shake at the Soviets' sense of bewilderment. Topolski's memoir provides an unaffected, clear-eyed view of a life gone topsy-turvy during the first three years of the Second World War.

By turns, his remembrances are wrenching, horrifying, surreal, even funny.

"Funny" is a rather unlikely word to describe a prisoner's memoir, but then at times it must have seemed to the teenaged Topolski that a sense of humour was the only cord to sanity. During yet another of the interminable train rides ferrying him and his fellow inmates between prisons, one prisoner wonders where they managed to find a particular guard. "'That,' said the cavalryman, 'is what you get when two tractors mate.'"

Now 76, Topolski lives in Ottawa. Sixty years ago, he was a teenager eager for adventure, lying about his age at the enlistment office in his native Horodenka, Poland. Less than a month later, the Germans and the Red Army, linked by the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, had invaded his country from opposite directions.

Topolski planned to cross the border into Romania to join the Polish forces there. Caught in his illegal attempt by the Soviets, he would eventually be sentenced to five years.

So begins his three-year sojourn through a succession of prison camps in Russia and later, after the government grants an amnesty to all ex-Poles, during his long journey to meet the Polish 2nd Corps. Along the way, he meets a memorable collection of characters, including fellow inmates ranging from doctors to the dreaded zhuliki (young thieves) and the even younger urki, or juveniles who think nothing of slaughtering one of their own for cheating at cards.

Topolski displays amazing powers of recall in this memoir. Six decades melt away as he describes characters, events, his surroundings. He relied mostly on his memory, although he investigates the archives of the Sikorski Museum in London and checked facts and dates with fellow travellers.

Those companions come to life as if he were encountering them afresh: Roman, the classical scholar; Doctors Weisglass and Epstein in One Star Sing Sing; Tadzio, who shared tales of Ovid and taught him the Greek alphabet. They lean on one another for survival against hunger, deprivation and the cruelty or indifference of their keepers.

With the Soviets now finding themselves losing the war against the Germans, there comes the amnesty order for Polish prisoners. But freedom in a starving country proves hardly more tenable than prison life.

Riding the rails with fellow volunteers, using his artist's talent and sheer bravado to alternately fudge bread coupons and ingratiate himself with a gang of train robbers, Topolski must evade capture after losing his Certificate of Release to thieves.

In one vignette worthy of James Bond, he and a companion leap from the roof of one swaying train car to another, pursued by thieves. After a bout with typhus, he finally reaches the volunteer camp on the Caspian Sea.

The threat of starvation is never far away, as Topolski notes in his preface: "What I may have failed to convey in this book is the feeling of hunger that for three years was the basso continuo of my existence. To make the reader aware of this, I wanted to write I AM HUNGRY at the top of every page."

I had initially expected to read of Topolski's thoughts and feelings during what must have been the most harrowing years of his life. Aside from the frequent references to starvation -- his own and others' -- he tells the story dispassionately, as if he were a slightly ironic observer of this world gone mad. Perhaps this is a coping mechanism or the distancing effect of the passage of years. In any event, it turns out to be a powerful way to let the story tell itself.

"Luckily for me, I never analysed my situation. I was busy most of the time -- talking, listening, reading and rereading, sketching and scribbling on any available scrap of paper. At night, instead of brooding about our grim reality, I daydreamed, making detailed plans for my future voyages and studies and for enjoying life with the friends I'd left behind."

Topolski's book has been called a Polish Angela's Ashes. Frank McCourt has since followed up his bestseller with a second instalment, 'Tis. Topolski ends his memoir with mention of his further adventures until the war's end. If he can sustain the sure footing he displays in this volume, Without Vodka II would be worth the read.

ILLUSTRATION

Photo: Without Vodka

DOC. #: 20000729HS265688 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~