30 - In the Shadow of the Shadow of Katyn (Patreon)

Stanislaw, the author of the book and the father of the man I was talking to, was one such officer who was set to be executed. He was at a train station three miles from the execution place, in Katyn forest, when he was recalled to Moscow for further interrogation. Thus was he spared a bullet. Instead, he was sent to a gulag.

The reason I suddenly had a new friend on Pender Island in British Columbia, seventy years later, is because while he was in the gulag, his life was saved by an anarchist.