Author: SIWIŃSKI Jan
Title: Katorżnik czyli pamiętniki sybiraka napisany przez ... exiled in 1863 for eight years to catorial work in Nerchinskiy mines, Zabaykalsky country in Siberia.
- Place of issue: Kraków
- Year of publication: 1905
- Publisher: Polish Publishing Company
- Number of pages: 127, [2]
- Illustrations, maps: ---
- Size: 20.5 cm
- Binding: hard cloth with embossed floral ornamentation, gilt on spine, decayed page edges
- Condition: signature private bookplate stamp
- ISBN: ---
Description:
Maliszewski 3331.
Jan Siwiński (1845-1924) Memoirs of an exile after the January Uprising. He joined a volunteer insurgent unit as an 18-year-old, having run away from home. He took part in a skirmish near Rataje and Komorow, where he was taken prisoner. He was imprisoned and interrogated in Kielce and Radom. By court sentence he was sentenced to 4 years of hard labor, a period soon doubled.
Recalling the road to the place of exile, he wrote: "The road through hell is the very stage through Siberia" ("this sentence from Siwiński's diary is among those often quoted in works on Polish exiles". (PSB)).
He worked in a gold mine, road construction, and at the port. After five years of exile, he was covered by a tsarist amnesty, and returned to Galicia, from where he originated.