Guarded By Angels: How My Father And Uncle Survived Hitler And Cheated Stalin

This is the dramatic story of two young Jews, Gene and Mrk Elsner, who were forced to flee their home in southern Poland in 1939, only to be arrested by Soviet authorities in Lwow the following year and transported to labor camps north of the Arctic Circle. Near death from starvation, they were released after 18 months and traveled thousands of miles across the Soviet Union, passing through Central Asia, before finding refuge in a Cossack village in the Caucasus. They survived six months of Nazi occupation and were later drafted by a Polish brigade attached to the Red Army and participated in the Soviet advance through Poland and into Germany, where Gene was seriously wounded and counted for dead.