A presentation by Martin Stepek, author of the book Jan Stepek: Gulag to Glasgow.
Jan Stepek was one of Scotland’s most highly regarded businessmen. But before he came to Scotland he had a remarkable and traumatic life. Raised in a farm in pre-WW2 Poland he and his family were deported to a Soviet labour camp in 1940 and then endured a five thousand mile exodus wandering through Russia until they reached freedom in Persia, now Iran.
Now his son Martin Stepek has written this detailed account of how a family built a home and community from scratch then lost it all in wartime, only to ultimately find themselves in a new land where they had to use every ounce of resilience they had to create a new, prosperous and safe life for themselves.
With astonishing stories of survival and loss contained within a geopolitical landscape of immense proportions read how Jan Stepek and his family experienced some of the most harrowing yet ultimately uplifting years any human could face.
