This autobiography narrates the early life of a woman who saw Emperor Franz Josef ride through the streets of Vienna after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914, and witnessed Hitler"s entry into Vienna in 1938. The account portrays the events of Helen Otley"s childhood and youth, her experiences in the Austrian educational system, presents impressions of intellectual and cultural life in Austria between the wars, of conditions in German industry in the early 1940"s, and describes in detail her confinement in the Auschwitz concentration camp and a women"s prison near Leipzig.