A memoir of a child’s forced relocation to Siberia under Stalin’s
Gulag system reveals the potential for true human kindness in the face
of extraordinary hardship.
In April of 1940, six-year-old Ida woke to the sound of pounding on
her door. Soviet soldiers forcibly packed her and her mother onto a
train with thousands of their neighbors and deported them to remote
Siberia, leaving them stranded to survive the brutal winter in subhuman
conditions. Looking back, Ida shares their struggles: foraging for food,
trying to reunite with her imprisoned father, spending weeks in a
desolate hospital with typhoid fever, and adapting to shifts in the
political climate to make the long journey home to Poland.
Ida published this acclaimed memoir in her native Polish in 2011.
Here, Ida’s granddaughter, Isabella Skrypczak, translates her babcia’s
words and provides additional context—including describing the
remarkable life Ida has gone on to live as a pioneering doctor.
In the vein of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, A Polish Girl in Siberia: Surviving and Transcending Exile (Disruption Books, 2026) chronicles
Ida’s experiences on a lesser-known front of the Second World War.
Together, Ida and Isabella reflect on how every small act of kindness
contributed to Ida’s liberation from exile and ability to build a life
and a family. Her story celebrates the capacity of the human spirit to
not only survive trauma but thrive beyond it.Ida
Kinalska-Pietruska survived childhood exile to Siberia during the Soviet
Union’s World War II assault on Poland. When she returned to Poland as a
teen, she began studying medicine. A pioneering endocrinologist, she
founded the School of Endocrinology and Diabetology in Białystok and led
the region’s first endocrinology clinic for twenty years. Ida has
authored more than four hundred publications, mentored countless other
doctors, and collaborated across the international medical community,
including using her research to make widely known the Chernobyl
disaster’s effects on people’s endocrinological health. She has been
honored with the Order Odrodzenia Polski, Poland’s second-highest
civilian state award, and two Doctor Honoris Causa titles, reflecting
her resilience, brilliance, and global impact on science and humanity.Isabella Skrypczak
is an author, intuitive healer, and former HR professional in Big Tech
whose work bridges the seen and unseen. Born to Polish immigrants and
raised in Houston, Texas, she spent every summer with her grandmother in
Poland. When her grandmother’s memoir gained national attention in
Polish media, Iza felt called to translate it into English—an act of
love, remembrance, and advocacy. As war returned to Eastern Europe, she
recognized the urgency in sharing this history with the Western world.
She lives in Austin, Texas, with her daughter, Kamila.Stephen Satkiewicz
is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational
Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military
History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian
and East European history. He is currently the Book Review Editor for Comparative Civilizations Review.
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