Remember: Helen's Story

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

Helen Kordas Najborowski, the subject of this moving biography, was born
in a remote district of Poland. She was 16 when Russian soldiers
arbitrarily arrested her family in 1940. About half of the book recounts
Helen’s life in a Siberian prison camp, where she was subjected to
mindlessly brutal treatment at the hands of the Communists.

After a couple of years of backbreaking labor, Helen was released into
British care and taken to India, where she encountered kindness but also
new dangers. After the war ended, she found love and marriage and
children in England. Eventually, the family emigrated to Saskatchewan.
Their happiness was short-lived; tragedy struck repeatedly, and Helen
lived out much of her life in grinding poverty. This is a wrenching but
inspiring read.