My Three Countries

Born in Romania, Anna Untch grew up in a community that gave special privileges to Saxons. She spent her childhood working on the family farm and learned German in school. But after World War II, the reparations Germany owed the Soviets were paid in the form of hard labor. Anna, her sisters, and thousands of Germanic people from Central and Eastern Europe were rounded up at gunpoint and marched to the nearest train station, where boxcars waited to take them to the Soviet bloc. What followed were years of slave labor, starvation, illness and little hope—until a daring escape changed everything.