Today we pay homage to a previous guest of 100 Not Out, Ada Murkies.

Ada passed away recently aged 98, and it would be remiss of us not to remember and replay for you Ada’s incredible outlook on life.

Imagine this: It’s 1940 and Ada Murkies is a young Polish teenager of 17 when she hears a knock at the door. It’s 2 o’clock in the morning and it’s Russian army officers, demanding they pack their belongings within 2 hours and prepare to be deported to Siberia.

Ada, her brother and sister, mother and grandmother are loaded on to the cattle cart and offloaded to Siberia – a TWO week journey.

Once there, they work in the gold mines and forestries in COLD WINTERS we can’t even imagine.

All the the while the family awaits news of Ada’s father, an officer in the Polish army, only to find that he is one of the 20,000 poles murdered in the infamous Katyn Forest massacre.

When news hits that Poland is creating an army to support Russia in its bid to defeat Hitler, Ada immediately enlists.

What happens next? Well, this is only the beginning of the story … and this is where we pick up our interview.

You will also hear on this interview the voice of Alice Murkies, one of Ada’s four daughters.

Image courtesy of SBS