Description

Born in 1925, Andrew Jurkowski enjoyed a peaceful boyhood on his grandfather’s farm in western Poland until the Nazi invasion of 1939. For the next six years, he and his family endured the occupation, determined not only to survive but to fight back with small acts of defiance until Germany was defeated.

Instead of bringing relief, the end of the war brought new dangers, as Poland was taken over by Russian-led Communists. Andrew, then a young man of twenty, was sentenced to a labor camp. He was forced to choose between death and a dangerous escape to the West.

This book is Andrew’s account of his experiences in the vanished world of rural Poland before, during, and after World War II.