Editor’s note: You may have noticed that my primary interests are criminals and refugees. Well my grandparents were both and I’m shopping a book proposal about it, trying to tie the story of their Cold War escape to current refugee crises—of which we seem dead set on producing more and more and more. It’s why I constantly prattle on about the Syrian refugees I met in a camp in Bulgaria who crossed through the same border into Bulgaria (Hi guys!) my grandfather tried to cross to get out, ending up, instead, in a gulag. A subscriber, Gordon Hanson, wrote me to say he liked it so it gave me the idea to share an excerpt here. Thanks for reading and as always thank you for subscribing.
Thank you for sharing this in honour of all those lives brutally lost and for keeping the history of these atrocities alive.
I love this piece and the pic of your grandfather. Just so vivid and moving
Thank you! As my friend joked when I first published it, "That's no 'Soy Boy;'"