The Long Walk: New Comment
Most of the traffic on my home page at www.mikaelstrandberg.com is driven by the Long Walk, a book written by Slavomir Rawicz. Is the story true or not? Latset comment is this by Dave Carsley:
(All articles are collected here https://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/the-long-walk-articles/)
Honestly, I am totally blown away by the number of intellectually-stunted, naieve individuals in this comment section who believe stories about men spending 13 days in the Gobi dessert with no water; seeing abominable snowmen; climbing the Himalayas in sandals and with no equipment; parting and never speaking again with — nor being able to prove the existence of — any of the “survivors” they went through this ordeal with (not a single one of whom ever popped up to say “yeah, that was me. I was there with Rawicz”).
Especially when one survivor was ostensibly a well educated American who was supposedly sent by his employer to work on a European subway and simply never returned. There would be TONS of documentation of that man.
Rawicz had 6 decades to locate just ONE of these other “survivors” or people again, and couldn’t? This book was a big hit in the late 50s (and started being seriously questioned way back then) and is in 25 languages. Nobody who could verify this story EVER came forward in the many decades since? Not a fellow survivor (or their kids)? Not a worker at the hospital they supposedly spent months in? Not one of the British guards on patrol in India? Not one of the villagers they came across? Not the camp commandant? Not the commandant’s wife who supposedly helped them escape? Not a worker in the ski shop? Not ONE of their hundreds of fellow prisoners who remembers that crazy night when that American, those poles, and that Latvian went missing and the guards went crazy searching for them and started cracking down on all the inmates? Not one of the camp guards themselves??? Remember people, the USSR fell– these people could easily come forward without worrying for their safety!!
What disturbs me the most is that the people who believe this fairy tale not only disregard all the documentation proving this story is total BS by saying “soviets faked documentation all the time” (completely ignoring the polish documentation as well as the polish soldiers who stood up at Rawicz’s speeches and yelled “I served with you in the army the whole time, you are lying”), but then they implore those of us who aren’t gullible suckers and actually have common sense to “prove that it didn’t happen”, or tell us that, “nobody could make up all the details Rawicz wrote in his book if they were lying” (ignoring the fact that HE didn’t write the book, his professional tabloid journalist landlord did). These people have apparently never met a compulsive liar or a con man. Are they unaware that people lead entire double lives for decades???
Sometimes I have a hard time believing such gullible people actually exist and live amongst us, driving, voting, and raising kids. Then I remember that there are thousands of Indian call centers scamming people out of their money daily by saying they’re “tech support”, or telling folks they’ve “inherited money from a distant relative who’s a Nigerian prince”.
No matter how badly you want this story to be true because it made you feel inspired about humanity, or made you believe that the little guy can win against insurmountable odds… it’s not. Not only has there never been **one single tiny little shred of evidence** produced that this story is true in the 80 years since it “took place”, but there’s plenty of evidence (actual documentation) that it’s not true. The only piece of actual evidence of any kind that you have to believe this story is true is that the man who told you this tall tale in the first place says so!
And you people serve on juries??? You’re the kind of folks who used to burn old ladies alive for “witchcraft”! It’s OBVIOUSLY not true, people. Use your brains! Get a grip!!
(All articles are collected here https://www.mikaelstrandberg.com/the-long-walk-articles/)