Forced to endure occupation by both the Soviets and the Nazis, the author's family also faced the terror of Ukrainian "ethnic cleansing" by nationalist forces. The horror of the Nazi forced-labor camps wherein millions of Europeans were enslaved is vividly recounted, as is the family's time in displaced persons camps. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, unable or unwilling to return to their own countries, waited for the chance to enter these camps under the American Occupation Forces. The author's family subsequently immigrated to America.

The book is based on family memories and recorded accounts; U.S. interviews and European published oral histories; published English, Polish, Ukrainian, German and Russian sources; U.N. documents and Nuremberg testimonies; and recent information from Warsaw.