In 2006, the BBC released a report based on former Soviet records, including statements written by Rawicz himself, showing that Rawicz had been released as part of the 1942 general amnesty of Poles in the USSR and subsequently transported across the Caspian Sea to a refugee camp in Iran, leading the report to conclude that his supposed escape to India never occurred.
[2][3] The son of Rupert Mayne, a British intelligence officer in wartime India, stated that in 1942, in Calcutta, his father had interviewed three emaciated men who claimed to have escaped from Siberia.
According to his account, when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union defeated Poland, Rawicz returned home, where the NKVD arrested him on 19 November 1939.
Researchers for the BBC Radio program The Long Walk in 2006 unearthed documents indicating that the charge against Rawicz might have been for killing a Soviet NKVD officer.
[5] According to the account in the book, Rawicz was transported, alongside thousands of others, to Irkutsk and made to walk to the Gulag Camp 303, which was 650 kilometres (400 mi) south of the Arctic Circle.
According to Rawicz, he moved from India to Iraq, then re-entered the Soviet Union in June 1942 and rejoined the Polish Army on 24 July 1942 at Kermini.
He then returned to Iraq with Polish troops and moved on to Palestine, where he spent time recovering in a hospital and teaching in a military school.
[12] Mayne did not provide any further details, did not identify Rawicz as one of the men, and despite extensive subsequent research no hard confirmatory evidence has been found.
He lived a quiet life with his family, giving public talks and answering fan mail, until his death, aged 88, on 5 April 2004.
In addition to the familiar biographical details to 1956, presumably supplied by author or publisher,[13] the article added: "About his real name he preserves secrecy".
Examples include: Leszek Gliniecki has copies of official documents which state that Witold Gliński was born in 1926 (22 November), was sent into forced exile to a special settlement Kriesty in Arkhangelsk Oblast (Province), Russia, and stayed there from 24 February 1940 to 2 September 1941.
Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN): INDEKS REPRESJONOWANYCH (Index of Victims of Soviet Repression) tom XIV częśc (part)2; 3.