A poignant account of the perils and fortunes of an indomitable survivor of violence in Eastern Europe during World War II.

In 1939, to escape Nazi occupation, 14-year-old Adam Broner and his older brother Sam left their home and family in Lodz, Poland, and made their way to the Soviet Union. Adam enlisted in the Red Army to join the fight against the Nazis but was sent to work in a Siberian coal mine instead when his nationality was discovered. After a bold and daring escape from Siberia, Broner reached the Soviet Polish Kosciuszko Army, joined the struggle against the Nazis, participated in the liberation of Poland, and rode victorious into Berlin in 1945. He later learned that his parents, siblings (except Sam), and all other close relatives had perished during the war. 

 Broner rebuilt his life, established a family, returned to Moscow for a degree in economics, and then went back to Poland, where he accepted a job in the Polish central planning agency. Eventually fed up with the growing anti-Semitism of the Communist government there, the author emigrated to the United States in 1969. He earned a doctorate from Princeton University and served as an economic adviser to New Jersey governors and the state legislature. In retirement, Broner learned portrait painting and reproduced the likenesses of his parents and siblings from memory, which are presented along with their biographies in this book.

In recounting his struggle for survival during some of the most dramatic upheavals of the 20th century— the Great Depression, Nazism, World War II, and the spread of Communism in Central Europe— Broner reveals a life dedicated to the ultimate goal of freedom, which he achieved through a combination of arduous effort and fortunate circumstance.

 

Adam Broner is former secretary of the New Jersey Economic Policy Council and lives to day in Sarasota, Florida.

Antony Polonsky is the Albert Abramson Chair of Holocaust Studies, an appointment held jointly at Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Museum. He is author of The History of Poland since 1863 and The Little Dictators: A History of Eastern Europe since 1918.

"This well-written and compelling autobiography is an important memoir. . . . The account of Broner’s life is interspersed with well-drawn and often moving accounts of pre-war Jewish life and the members of his family."

— Antony Polonsky, editor of A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto

"An interesting first-hand account of the maelstrom of Polish history in the 20th century. . . . Insight on the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles in the post-war years, as well as the government’s stance on Jewish matters, will be regarded as a high point of this book."

— Jay Howard Geller, author of Jews in Post-Holocaust Germany