Sometimes in war the toughest enemies are starvation and disease. Taken from their home, forced to leave their country, put to work in labour camps, frozen and starved, Adam doubts that he and his family will ever make it out alive. Even if they were to get away, they might freeze to death, or starve, or the bears might get them. For the Polish refugees, the whole of the USSR becomes a prison from which there is no escape.