This is the story 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 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."" After the war, and after he met and married his wife Fania, while in Russia, they return to Wierzbnik together. There he learned that none of his family survived the German occupation. This fascinating memoir sheds new light on the realities of life in the USSR during the Second World War.

Translated by: Maurice Wolfthal