In the summer of 1941, a pretty German teenager, tortured by a terrible secret she dared not reveal, did the only thing she could think of to get away from her abusive father. She was barely 16-years-old and only dimly aware of the war raging across Europe when she joined a branch of the German navy. But she soon discovered that by escaping one demon, she fell into an even darker hell filled with greater dangers, one that lasted long after the shooting and bombing stopped in 1945. Her life became a struggle to survive and reunite with her beloved mother, who remained suck behind the Iron Curtain. Hungry, sick and depressed, she became a refugee in her own devastated homeland and resigned herself to an early death. But fate and a series of saviors had other plans and this is her own story of a struggle in an unforgiving world, of her many unexpected heroes and, finally, of the American solder who came to her final rescue.