On the Way to Siberia

Germany 1944: Hermann Frech is not yet sixteen years old when he is conscripted for military duty – at an anti-aircraft battery. His duty is supposed to keep him in comparative safety near his home, but as the Third Reich collapses around him, his duty orders take him far away. Forced to become a “child-soldier,” he huddles in the Reichstag in Berlin as the Soviet Red Army makes its final assault on the capital. Taken prisoner, his life is a daily struggle to find scraps of food to eat and avoid being killed. When he thinks that life could not get any worse, the Soviets tell him that he is destined for Siberia! Hermann Frech’s compelling account helps the reader to feel the pain and dilemma he faces. This is not a story about heroes or the rights and wrongs of war; it is a story about a captured young man’s struggle to survive and return home to his family, and how, throughout the ordeal, his spiritual faith helps him cope and is strengthened by the experience.