Four-year-old Ruth is torn from a comfortable home in 1939. She and her mother travel east to search for safety. Her father remains behind. He treks by foot across Poland to join them shortly before the Russian Army moves into Lvov. Rounded up at gunpoint as enemies of the State and transported in cattle cars to primeval Siberia, they manage to survive the winter. The following fall they are permitted to go south, with restrictions. En route the family is retaken prisoner and brought to Uzbekistan for the duration of the war. At war"s end, they opt for repatriation. They arrive in America in 1947.