"Robert Vas's Orders from Above is a truly harrowing and shaming j'accuse." (Sunday Telegraph)

Between 1944 and 1947 the British and American Governments handed back to Stalin a great many Russians - PoWs, civilians, women and children - who were captured or liberated by the Western Forces. Our authorities were well aware that to many of these people repatriation might mean certain death or years in Stalin's labour camps; that most of them were eligible for political asylum. Yet they carried out the policy of forced repatriation - and kept it secret for nearly 30 years.

For the politicians who made the decisions it seemed a diplomatic and military necessity; for the repatriated Russians: 'a great betrayal'; for the British soldiers who had to carry it out (as one said): 'It stank of Belsen and Dachau'.

Now the controversy raised by the first showing of Robert Vas's film has been fanned by revelations in a new book Victims of Yalta.