A wealthy, prominent German-Jewish family was torn apart, first by suicide, then by Hitler. At sixteen, Siddi, the youngest, was left on her own in Nazi Germany. Through an extraordinary chain of events, she found herself in Central Asia. Through an equally extraordinary chain of events, Leon, a handsome Polish Jew, also found himself in Central Asia. Siddi and Leon met and fell in love. They struggled to survive hunger, homelessness, deadly epidemics, a black market economy, and Soviet police harassment. After the war, they managed to get from Central Asia to a displaced persons camp in Southern Germany. Along the way, they had a baby. In the DP camp, this Jewish couple developed a friendship, which defied the hatreds of the time, with a German woman and put their baby girl into her care. Many vignettes describe the people in Siddi and LeonÕs different worlds: the sister who met King Edward VIII; the puritanical daughter of a brothel owner; the Jewish friend who survived living underground in Berlin.