1309 Days to Freedom: The autobiography of Dietrich W. Geschke

This is the autobiography of Dietrich W. Geschke, who was born in pre-war East Prussia, lived on his father's farm until Jan. 1945. Along with his mother and sister he was captured by the Red Army and experienced the killings, mistreatments, hunger and plunder by the Russian soldiers after the war and spent the next 3 1/2 years with his mother and sister on collective farms in Kaliningrad Oblast (former pre-war East Prussia). Dietrich's mother worked every day as a forced laborer without any pay, food, clothes or days off. Dietrich describes his experiences, how he helped manage the family's scarce food sources to survice the hunger and starvation under the constant threat of armed Russian guards patrolling all available food sources on the collective farm. Stalin wanted all Germans out of pre-war East Prussia to settle Kaliningrad Oblast with Russians transposed from Belarus and other Russian provinces. In September 1948 the long avaited day of leaving the collective farm for good, came when the family left K.O. and arrived in East Germany. They escaped across the border from East to West Germany on foot in November 1948 to finally experience their long awaited freedom after living 3 1/2 years under Stalin's regime. Dietrich started grade school in West Germany after a 4 1/2 year hiatus of not attending any school. He experience real freedom when he and his family, consisting of his father, his mother and his sister. arrived in the U.S. as an immigrant in April 1952. under the Displaced Persons's Program offered by the U.S. Government. His father served as a soldier on the Eastern Front and was captured by the British Forces and released in West Germany soon after the war. Dietrich started high school in Iowa, not having had any previous instructions in english. He received his B.S. degree in psychology and his M. D. degree from the University of Michigan. He spent his career as a general surgeon and urologist in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.