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My Cold Earth manuscript has been read and favorably reviewed by several subject experts, including Jakub Nowakowski, Director of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow; Marek Probosz, a Polish-American film actor, director, screenwriter, and producer; and Wanda Urbanska, an American author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, and founding president of the Jan Karski Educational Foundation.

The manuscript has been edited by Bozena Zaremba, an experienced Polish-American editor. She is a native of Krakow, who received an M.A. degree in English Language and Literature from the prestigious Jagiellonian University.

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In writing this book, I drew heavily on my research for Katyn: Stalin’s Massacre and the Triumph of Truth. The massacre claimed the lives of a large segment of the Polish intelligentsia. The Poles have gone to great lengths to bring the facts of that tragedy to the West’s attention. That tragedy and its aftermath have posed in the postwar era a major barrier to the normalization of Soviet-Polish relations. The tragedy foretells much about Russian crimes in Ukraine. In 2008, the President of Poland awarded me the Commander’s Cross, one of the country’s highest honors, for my work on the Katyn subject.

I am confident that this novel gives meaning, context, and drama to events and lives that should never be forgotten—by the Poles, by their World War II allies, and, most of all, by the Russians who, 83 years after the Katyn crime was committed, continue to live in a barbaric authoritarian state.

Cold Earth

Synopsis

My historical novel Cold Earth is based on a true but little-known story of a secret mission of the Polish Underground in 1944 to forestall a Russian takeover of Poland. The story is especially relevant today because it foretells much about Russian perfidy and cruelty in the current invasion of Ukraine. In my narrative, which is mostly set in Nazi-occupied Poland, a love affair unfolds between the underground’s mission leader and its radio operator under near-constant threats from SMERSH, the counterintelligence arm of the Red Army.

The mission leader, Wit (VEET, diminutive for Witold), is a forensic archaeologist who escaped to London in 1939 after a joint Nazi-Soviet invasion overran Poland. In London, he is about to complete an official inquiry into a mysterious plane crash that in 1943 took the life of the iconic President of the Polish government-in-exile, Wladyslaw Sikorski. Despite Wit’s heated objections, the government orders him back to Poland, where his technical expertise is needed to verify German claims that the Soviets murdered thousands of Polish officers early in 1940, in what would be later known the Katyn Forest Massacre. At this point in 1944, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union have turned on each other in a titanic struggle in which Nazi hopes for victory are growing dimmer by the day. That conflict has left the Poles trapped in a “Forgotten War” in which their western allies have abandoned them.

Wit meets Maja (MA-yah), the mission radio operator, soon after he returns to Poland. They clash from the start because she resents his “armchair” war from London while she has risked her life daily in an underground “wolfpack” that blows up German supply trains to the Eastern Front. Wit has no idea that Maja is Jewish because she joined the underground using the identity papers of a young Catholic woman her age who was killed in a bombing raid. The Polish Underground, the largest clandestine force in occupied Europe, excludes Jews with unsubstantiated claims that they’re disloyal.

In time, it becomes clear to Wit that the mission purpose goes far beyond verification of German claims against the Soviets; in actuality, it involves the seizure of ironclad evidence of Soviet guilt being held by the Germans in occupied Krakow’s Institute for Forensic Research. That evidence is to be sunk in watertight crates in a lake just west of Krakow until the war ends, at which time, it will be recovered for presentation at an international truth commission to expose to the world the inhumanity of the Stalinist system and help Poland become free and independent.

A raid on the Institute lab is planned and staged at a remote palace in the Uplands north of Krakow, where a Polish count is hiding a “colony” of Jewish and Christian artists and intellectuals from the Gestapo. Unfortunately, the raid gets botched by Wit, whose failure of nerve costs the get-away driver his life. Outraged by Wit’s cowardice, Maja refuses to speak to him.

Rumors of the botched raid stir deep suspicions and antagonisms toward Wit and Maja among the Count’s guests, who fear a German overseer will turn them in to German authorities, potentially exposing them to death.

Ostracism by the Count’s guests forces Wit and Maja to recalibrate. With no one else to turn to, they begin taking long walks together, and slowly, their icy relationship thaws.

Once Wit gains Maja’s trust, she confides that she is Jewish, that her father, a prominent goldsmith in Rzeszow, was murdered by the Soviets, and that her mother and sister were sent to Belzec, a German death camp. This revelation comes in a visit to the estate carp ponds, where they are struck by the beauty of an alpenglow over the mountains where the Vistula River flows north on its long journey to the Baltic Sea.

Suddenly, Maja cries out in despair: “I feel guilty taking in this marvelous view! ... Why did I abandon those I love most? ... Why?” Wit is shocked when she buries her head in his chest, sobbing uncontrollably. Holding her close, he awkwardly tries to brush away her tears. Once she regains her composure, Maja defiantly declares, “I will avenge their loss if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

After a long pause, Wit sighs, “Then we have no choice but to complete what we set out to do.”

In the last quarter of the book, the couple falls deeply in love. They learn that the evidence for a truth commission has been moved from the lab to Wieliczka, a massive salt mine just outside Krakow, where miners have carved many historical figures in salt. They set out right away to retrieve it but are tracked at every step by Yegov, a Red Army colonel sent by SMERSH, disguised as a Lithuanian. His orders are to seize the evidence to avoid a potential catastrophe in the world court of opinion. Wit redeems himself by igniting a methane explosion at the salt mine that buries Yegov in a tomb of rubble. Wit and Maja then truck the proof away to the West in the closing days of the war to turn it over Gen. Patton’s Third Army. Their fate is resolved at a freight forwarding dock just outside Dresden. Wit leaves Maja at the station with the evidence while he seeks out a nearby unit of the U.S. Army. While he’s gone, Maja sees an advanced unit of the Red Army approaching. She sets fire to the crates of evidence to keep them out of Russian hands.

The plot of the novel makes possible the interweaving of three captivating themes: first, a “Forgotten War” in which the Poles were trapped between two walls of steel in the final year of the war and left to fend for themselves; second, the character of the history-obsessed Poles, who are courageous in battle and have struggled many times to maintain their independence; and third, the need for reconciliation between Polish Catholics and Jews, whose relations are deeply strained, in part, by a “competition” of martyrs who’ve endured heart-rending losses.

Cold Earth is based on several years of research in Poland, including one on a Fulbright Research Fellowship. After studying many of the above-mentioned events, it was clear that there were too many gaps in the true story to render it into nonfiction. I thus decided to write a fictional account juxtaposing the known facts with plausible reporting of what might have happened. I am confident that the fictionalized elements of Cold Earth truthfully reflect the “whole” story. I drew on the diaries of underground operatives who had experiences similar to Wit and Maja. My Maja character is based, in part, on a young Jewish woman who joined the underground using identity papers provided by a Catholic priest in Rzeszow, based on his parish registry’s listing for a young woman Maja’s age.

As a lifelong writer, I began my career with the Associated Press and as a political speechwriter in Washington, DC. My first book, Katyn: Stalin’s Massacre and the Triumph of Truth, was published by Scribner’s and became a bestseller in Poland and three other countries. The book was updated in 2010 to include new evidence. It has been widely reviewed by leading news outlets in the U.S., Poland and elsewhere. It remains in print on the backlist of Cornell University Press.