Author Description

Ann Lehtmets was one of the few women to have lived through Stalin's Holocaust and reached the Western World. One morning in June 1941, Russian soldiers arrested Ann Lehtmets in her home in Estonia, tore her from her husband and children and loaded her in a cattle truck, destination unknown. She survived her sentence in Siberia, negotiating a life where secret police, brutish foremen and hostile landladies conspired with cold, hunger and backbreaking labor to make existence difficult for all and deadly for many. Ann Lehtmets owed her life to spirit, intelligence, guile and humour. These qualities shine through on every page of her extraordinary recollections.