Historian Michal Giedroyc has written a moving account of his family’s epic journey through wartime Russia.

Mr Giedroyc, 81, of Western Road, South Oxford, is looking forward to the publication of his life story, Crater’s Edge, next month.

Before completing his memoirs, he lectured on the history of medieval Lithuania, and he has previously been honoured by Oxford University and the Republic of Lithuania.

In Crater’s Edge, Mr Giedroyc tells how, in September 1939, as a ten-year-old boy, he watched the Russian security police seize his home in the eastern borderlands of Poland, which became part of Belarus after the Second World War.

His father, a judge, was imprisoned while his mother, Michal and his two sisters were left on the streets to fend for themselves.

Later they were transported in cattle trucks to Siberia with hundreds of thousands of other Polish deportees.

They suffered more than two years of deprivation and when all hope was gone, news arrived of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

This prompted Michal’s mother and her children to begin a second gruelling journey from Siberia across Central Asia to Iran, then Palestine, and finally to England in 1947.

Mr Giedroyc said: “I used to get nightmares about the past which I kept secret from my wife.

“But after I wrote the book they disappeared, so I suppose it was a cathartic experience.”

After arriving in England, Mr Giedroyc attended Southampton University before working in aircraft design.

He and his wife Rosy, 73, who first came to Oxford on their honeymoon in 1958, have four children.

They married in 1958 and moved to Hong Kong, where Mr Giedroyc worked as an economics consultant for developing countries until 1966, when they returned to the UK.

They moved from Surrey to Oxford in 1979 and in the 1980s, Mr Giedroyc helped to safeguard the future of the Oxford Union, and was honoured for his efforts by the university in 1989.

Mr Giedroyc said of his book: “I wanted the history of Eastern Europe to be made more familiar to the people of Western Europe, and to remind people that the two tyrannies of the Second World War were the Nazis and the Soviet Union.

“I wrote the book for my children and my 15 grandchildren, so that they can find out more about where they came from.

“I won’t force my grandchildren to read it, but the story is out there now and I hope they will pick it up one day.

“The book started out as a very unwieldy manuscript and the whole process leading to publication has taken about ten years.”

Daughter Mel said: “I’m so proud of my dad. His book is a beautiful, lyrical reflection of the extraordinary life he has led.”

The book, which was read at an early stage by former Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire Hugo Brunner, is being launched at Oriel College, of which Mr Giedroyc is an honorary member, on Thursday, at 5.30pm.

  • Crater’s Edge is published on April 13 by Bene Factum Publishing, price £19.99.