Publisher's Synopsis
"Gone With The Wind," Margaret Mitchell's masterpiece described a "new world" of transition on the North American continent which changed the course and destiny of a nation. The "old world" European society changed forever with the impact and outcome of WWII and the subsequent Cold War's transformation and collapse of Europe's previous traditions and values. While Mitchell's book is fiction which was surrounded by real events, these memoirs are painfully true. Europe now remains in a status of on-going change. The events in this book recall the involvement of the United States' in those extraordinary, cataclysmic events which brought about a familial sense as never before between America and Europe. The old world and the new world became united in aspirations, dreams and human rights. The sacrifices of the Eastern Europeans did not lead to their rehabilitation. Countries from Central and Eastern Europe, including Romania continue to bleed from those old wounds. The nations which made these sacrifices need to be remembered. They expect nothing more than their dignity and reintegration within the standards of the 20th and 21st centuries in the spirit of Western Democracy for which 100 million died as opposed to the approximately one half million on the Western Front which include the Allied Forces. The institutions which formed Romania such as the Church, educational institutions and the family have been systematically destroyed or rendered useless for the last 70 years for many reasons, mostly as a result of communism. What remains to be seen is whether or not the older institutions will ever come back to prominence and again serve as a guiding force to the future. These memoirs were written on behalf of the latter three generations, hoping it would impact and produce an echo of solidarity between Americans and Europeans at the grass roots level such as it was during World War II to revive a common spirit which was crushed. This book was critiqued and praised for its suspense which grips the reader as they share in my travails and those with me who suffered at the limits of human existence with one goal in mind. That is, our pursuit of human dignity and freedom was never compromised in our "Saga of Courage and Determination" (as characterized by John Woolfenden who authored "Desert Caravan on the Trail of Lawrence" of Arabia). This book produced a shock wave throughout Romania, as historians, university professors and literary critics underestimated the atrocities which were the by-products of Tito's neighboring Yugoslavia on Romania's western border and Stalin's Soviet Empire shortly after WWII. Romania, with its own Iron Curtain, never learned about the fate of their expatriates who were forced to leave their homeland due to crushing blows on every aspect of society. This book reveals the harsh realities and fate of some of those individuals, whose stories deserve to be remembered. Sorin J. Issvoran, DDS
