This vivid memoir describes the author's experiences as young girl in Poland, forced to flee to Warsaw after the Nazi bombing of Brest at the outbreak of World War II. She recounts the realities of life in occupied Poland, including the arrest by the Gestapo of her father and his death soon after in Auschwitz, the family's participation in the black market and the Warsaw Uprising, and her capture and incarceration with her mother in a forced labor camp. Once released from the camp, they joined their Russian relatives in Austria only to quickly leave with them to avoid approaching Soviet forces, experiencing a month-long, often comical journey on an ox-driven cart back to the U.S. zone of Germany.