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The Way Back
After the Soviet invasion of Poland in World War II, Polish army officer Janusz Wieszczek is held prisoner and interrogated by the NKVD. Unable to force a confession of espionage from him, the Soviets torture his wife until she denounces him. He is sentenced to 20 years in a Gulag labour camp in Siberia.
Janusz is imprisoned with Mister Smith, an American engineer; Khabarov, an actor; Valka, a hardened Russian criminal; Tomasz, a Polish artist; Voss, a Latvian priest; Kazik, a Pole suffering from night blindness; and Zoran, a Yugoslav accountant. Khabarov confides a plan to escape to Mongolia, passing Lake Baikal. Smith cautions Janusz that Khabarov discusses escape plans with newcomers only to maintain his morale, but nothing will come of it. Janusz intermittently hallucinates the front door of a country home and adjoining window ledge with plants and a rock he attempts to grab for but never quite reaches.
Janusz escapes from the camp with Smith, Valka, Voss, Tomasz, Zoran, and Kazik during a severe snowstorm that covers their tracks. Kazik freezes to death two nights later after getting lost while looking for firewood. Several more days of hard travel through Siberian snow brings them to Lake Baikal where they meet Irena, a Polish girl. She tells them that Russian soldiers murdered her parents and sent her to a collective farm near Warsaw from which she escaped. Smith knows Warsaw to be occupied by the Germans, not the Soviets, but despite misgivings that she'll slow them down and tax their meager food supply, he agrees to let her accompany them. He confronts her about the lie and she admits her parents were communists who were killed, leaving her in an orphanage.
The group reaches the unpatrolled border between the Soviet Union and Mongolia, and Valka, who idolizes Joseph Stalin, refuses to cross. The rest continue to Ulaanbaatar to discover that Mongolia is under communist control. Since China is at war with Japan, he convinces the group to take refuge in British India instead and they continue south across the Gobi Desert. Lack of water, sandstorms, sunburn, blisters, and sunstroke weaken the group. They find temporary relief at a well and then lose most of their water supply in a sandstorm. The group carries on; Irena dies a few days later followed by Tomasz. Smith nearly dies but Janusz, Zoran, and Voss motivate him until the severely dehydrated men reach a new water source.
The group passes through the Great Wall into China and reach the Himalayas on the verge of death. A Tibetan monk takes them to a Buddhist monastery where they regain their strength. Smith decides to go to Lhasa with the help of one of the monk's contacts, who will smuggle him out through China so he can make contact with the US military and return to home. The remaining three reach India where villagers assist them, and the Indian government arranges their peaceful return home.
Janusz walks around the world until 1989, when the communist regime in Poland is ousted from power. Fifty years after being taken captive, Janusz again envisions reaching for the rock by the door. This time he succeeds, and takes a key hidden underneath. He opens the door and is reunited with his wife.