This is the memoir of Yitzhak Erlichson, writing under the name Jerzy Edison, a Polish Jew who was nineteen years old when he escaped the Nazis by fleeing toward the USSR from his hometown, Wierzbnik. There he hoped to find a land true to its official ideals of justice, equality, and brotherhood. Arrested as an English spy, he was sent to prisons and slave-labour camps, and after his release worked and travelled in the USSR.

To his dismay, he found there injustice, inequality, and anti-Semitism equal to that of his native Poland. Attempting to join the Polish army forming in the USSR, he was told it was "only for Poles." He met and married his wife, Fania, during the war, and she nursed him back to health following his final imprisonment. They later returned to Wierzbnik only to learn that none of his family survived the German occupation. This fascinating story sheds new light on the realities of life in the USSR during the Second World War.

Translated by: Maurice Wolfthal