Where the Devil Says Goodnight

On a Russian occupied Bialystok street in early 1940, educated, down-to-earth, aristocrat Lithuanian born, Polish by marriage, is arrested with her husband of six months. With others they take a three-day slog with little food and water. Ten imprisoned in infamous Baranovichi, where the brutal inhuman Russian interrogator knows she speaks five languages, which can only mean she must be a spy. Kaz is tortured to death and four months late Beata is sentenced to ten-years in a Siberian...
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On a Russian occupied Bialystok street in early 1940, educated, down-to-earth, aristocrat Lithuanian born, Polish by marriage, is arrested with her husband of six months. With others they take a three-day slog with little food and water. Ten imprisoned in infamous Baranovichi, where the brutal inhuman Russian interrogator knows she speaks five languages, which can only mean she must be a spy. Kaz is tortured to death and four months late Beata is sentenced to ten-years in a Siberian Gulag near the Arctic Circle. She and thousands of people spend six weeks, standing 100 per open cattle wagons, crossing the world¿s biggest snowfield, to reach Camp Yaya, a place called `Where the Devil Says Goodnight. The date November 27, 1940. At Yaya the freezing ice-encrusted wood huts house 5,000 mostly innocent women. The stern, icy, Commandant has to persuade Beata to embrace Communism. In return she will be schooled in espionage to travel worldwide. She declines, her ten-year sentence means life, if she survives. For her the needle on the Richter scale of misery is about to set new records. In a bleak, harsh environment Beata is thrust into the disgusting conditions of the gulag, the vile behaviour of the Russian soldiers, the unbearable cold contrasting vividly with Beata¿s idyllic childhood, as a young girl on the family estate which was full of warmth and love. Near to death several times, friend and Polish actress Yaga Domanska helps Beata back to partial health. Beata¿s and Yaya¿s spirit and humour make these brutal scenes more palatable. Beata shows amazing strength in the face of death and despair, as do all of the women. Thousands have been there since the 1917 Russian Revolution. The small portions of so called food each swallows are filled with sawdust. Their clothing totally useless in the harsh weather. As they watch the moon haze over in the bitter Siberian nights, Chuckchi tribesmen murmur `The moon is putting on his furs.