Wesley Adamczyk

Some books stick in your head because they are beautifully written; some because they are so exciting; some because of the unique characters, and others because of the amazingly painful subject matter. When God Looked the Other Way by Wesley Adamczyk is the latter type of book.

During World War II, Russia attempted to finish what the Bolsheviks had started, the occupation of Poland, and the turning of Polish capitalists into communists. To do this, the Russian Army kidnapped and transported show more many Polish families to Russia, relocating the Polish in much the same way as the Germans were relocating the Jewish. While prison camps such as Auschwitz were not as prominent, the relocated Polish were still forced to work and could be sent to prison or Siberia with almost no provocation. Wesley Adamczyk was eight years old when Russian military kidnapped his family from their home in Poland and forced them to travel on cattle cars to Russia. His life from that point on was one focused on survival.

This is a unique perspective for a WWII book, and I highly recommend it for any who enjoy (is that the right word?) reading about this time period. My experience with World War II books centered almost entirely on the Jewish experience, but I had heard very little about the mass genocide of the Polish. Adamcyk's novel gave me a glimpse into a different side of the war, one just as harrowing, heartrending, and horrifying. show less

This amazing and moving book is subtitled, An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption. Written by Wesley Adamczyk, it is the riveting account of a young boy and his family as they are torn from their home and forced to survive in strange lands far from their homeland. How young Wesley survives is a story of courage and luck, of opportunities both found and created from his desire to live a free and a humane life. That he succeeds is due to both his will and his family's help and I wondered as show more I read why such an ordeal should have happened. But it did happen and I was moved by this book to be thankful for my own life. show less

When God Looked the other Way: an Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption. Wesley Adamczyk. 2004. Erik Larson cited this title in his book In the Garden of Beasts.
This is a first person account of the author’s family’s plight during WWII at the hands of the Soviets when they invaded Poland. The father, a Polish officer, was captured by the Soviets and the family was uprooted and moved to a settlement in southern Russia. Eventually the family ended up in Turkey where an American cousin show more found them and began to work to get them to the United States, but not before the mother died. After the war, Adamczyk discovered that his father was one of 25,421 POW Stalin ordered murdered in the Katyn Forest Massacre. More horrible and more evil than the Massacre was the undeniable fact that Roosevelt, Churchill and the other allies intentionally hid the fact that the Soviets were responsible for the mass murder. It really turned my stomach to see what these so-called great men did because they were sucking up to Stalin. show less