Tatyana's War : Escape and Survival on the Eastern Front in World War II

When Nazi troops invaded her home of Donetsk, Ukraine, Tatyana Artemyeff, a 27-year-old teacher, was left on her own to save her two children and mother when her conscripted husband's unit retreated from the city.

Luckily, she spoke German, and she was determined to find a way to survive the brutal occupation and keep her family from dying of starvation or facing execution. Decades later, when Tatyana's daughter found her diaries in a Connecticut attic, she discovered a unique account of life as a teacher in the Stalinist Soviet Union, the 1941 Nazi invasion of Donetsk, her survival under Nazi occupation, and her harrowing escape to the West.

Told from the perspective of her daughter, Helen, this book switches seamlessly between the first-person account of life and death and the immigrant story of her American-born daughter.