Vera Miller

In Search of a Childhood Song Vera Miller

"Wow, Mom, that sounds like an awful trip," I said. "No," she said, her voice wavering. "It was the best trip of my life!" Upon hearing this statement at age thirteen, the author became hooked on her mother's mysterious past and a three decade search for more details began. The remarkable story about her genealogy has proved fascinating to all who hear it. An ordinary Eastern European family grapples with extraordinary circumstances from the 1930s to the 1960s. Relating past and present adventures in Germany, Poland and the U. S., the author brilliantly narrates this exciting story of adversity and triumph. The family perseveres during WWII and the Cold War era integrating humor with optimism, determination, courage, ingenuity and love. The biography's main character is Bärbel, the author's mother. Born in a part of eastern Germany named Silesia, Bärbel grows up in Hitler's Nazi Germany. Her small community survives wartime shortages and extremist policies, but circumstances take a turn for the worse when post-war agreements cede her Silesian hometown area to Poland under Soviet communist rule. The nineteen-year-old Bärbel is desperate to get out of communist Poland. Her strategy for escape takes her to a West German refugee camp, then Münster, Germany where she meets her future husband, a Serbian former POW now a displaced person. The story follows their marriage and immigration to the U. S. with the adventures and culture shock that ensues. Family members are separated due to politics, border changes and the Iron Curtain, including a twenty-year-old sister alone and homeless in the demolished free West with all communication cut off to the Soviet dominated East. Bärbel's escape alters the entire family's destiny. Each family member has different challenges and opportunities, but they work separately and together to tirelessly find each members' way to freedom.