Elena Skrjabina's struggle to survive World War II began in1941, with the blockade of Leningrad, which she describes in a previously published portion of her diary, Siege and Survival: The Odyssey of a Leningrader. Skrjabina, her two sons, and her mother followed a trail of terror across the ice of Lake Ladoga, endured hunger, bombs, and Arctic cold before finding safety in Pyatigorsk. The present diary begins August 9, 1942, the night a German invasion transformed Pyatigorsk into an inferno. When the Red Army soldiers returned, the Skrjabinas and thousands of other Russians retreated with the routed Germans. This powerful and shocking diary tells the chilling tale of the little known, carefully suppressed Russian side of World War II.

Translated by: Norman Luxenburg