Author Presentation, Film Screening, and Book Signing

April 6^th, 2:00- 4:00

Author Talk “When God Looked the Other Way : An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption” + Film Screening “Children in Exile”

In the fall of 1939, when Wesley Adamczyk was only 7 years old, Soviet forces invaded his small Polish village. Wesley and his family were deported and found themselves shipped to one brutal Siberian camp after another, surviving communist double agents, desert scorpions, starving wolves, and the afflictions of extreme poverty. Miraculously young Wesley endures this ordeal, which he recounts in his memoir "When God Looked The Other Way" -- an account that manages to charm and engage even as it breaks the reader's heart. Adamcyzk places his own survival story in a broader context, telling not just his own story but also the story of one of the more overlooked aspects of World War II -- the Soviet assault on Poland

Please join us for the film’s first screening, “Children in Exile”, unanimously voted as Best Documentary Film in the 2008 San Luis Obispo film festival. Children in Exile is a documentary based on Wesley Adamczyk’s story. This film has not yet been released for public viewing, but the Urbana Free Library has been granted a special exception in honor of the Heroes events.