Today I’m reviewing From Gulag to Freedom by Sigrid Weidenweber. This book is the third in a trilogy and is touring with MediaGuests. It was a pleasure to participate in this tour. As per usual, my opinion is my own and I was not influenced in any way.
About the Book
In my darkest hours, when worry and despair about the future of my family blankets my soul, I hear my father’s voice, giving me hope. On the day they dragged him to the gulag, he had looked at my mother with courage in his eyes, and said, “We are eternal; our faith, like the Volga, flows forever.”
- Katya
The heroine of this powerful work, Katya, is a bright, energetic and resourceful Volga German girl, a worthy descendant of those first pioneers of the steppe we learned to know in the second volume. Katya is free to reveal, through her feminine creator, thoughts and circumstances often hidden to men. Sigrid artfully illuminates dress, colors, textures, foods and challenges as Katya embarks upon an adventurous escape from a gulag on the arctic tundra.
About the Author
Born in Germany in 1941, Sigrid Weidenwber remembers the horrific aftermath of fascism. At the end of the war, she found herself living under communism. After the Berlin Wall was built, she managed to escape the repressive environment with the help of friends and a French passport. To this day she does not speak French.
She holds degrees in medical technology, psychology and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Concordia University of Portland, Oregon for her trilogy “The Volga Flows Forever.” In her trilogy she brings to life Catherine the Great in her multiple roles as monarch, woman, lover, mother, grandmother and head of the general staff of the army, in Volume one. The following two historical volumes deal with the Volga Germans brought to Russia by Catherine’s edict.
Three years ago she moved to Santa Rosa Valley, California from Portland Oregon. She has passionately embraced California together with her family that also resides here.
Visit the Author’s Website
My Review
This trilogy has been a journey of discovery, history, and emotions. It started with Catherine and was continued with The Volga Germans. (Click on the titles to see my reviews.) Each book has drawn me further into a history too many of us aren’t sufficiently familiar with, although it seems that we are, at first.
Book Three, From Gulag to Freedom, is an incredible story. Katya has such a strong, vibrant personality that I feel I have met the woman in person. She is a dear friend. The story begins with Katya (Katarina) telling us about her earliest memories of her village of Volga Germans. They are an industrious, God-fearing people working the soil of the Russian steppes. We became familiar with the area in book two, but things changed rapidly in this book as the communist machine made itself known to this area and the power of Stalin was felt.
Katya’s father is not German, but Russian. This does not save him or his family from the influence of the Party. Members of the village are helpless as he is the first of many to be taken from their families for relocation in the harsh prison camps of Siberia. The Volga Germans have always been treated poorly by the Russians, but learn that they have only just begun to live in fear and starvation.
Katya finds herself in her own camp and one of the strongest. The horrors of a Siberian camp where women are required to cut trees and meet the quota or “norm” expected of men are bad enough, but to work through the extremes of a Siberian winter…it chilled me to the bone to just read it.
I thoroughly loved this book. Sigrid Weidenweber made me feel that she was telling me her story, it was so real. I could see the brutes that ran the camps, feel the empathy of the few guards who cared, see the dreary forests, and love and cry with Katya and the other women.
I loved the descriptions of the clothes and mannerisms of the nomadic tribes. The growth of this characters was incredible, but very believable. I felt the epic hardship of their lives. This book made me feel ashamed of the lack of understanding we have for those who suffer from political torture and neglect. It also made me even more grateful for the blessings of freedom and opportunity we have in America.
Sigrid has told such a wonderful tale with these books. I truly feel that my life has been blessed and enriched by reading them. While they are all long books – 558 to 580 pages each – they are well worth the time and effort. I thank Sigrid Weidenweber for what could only have been a labor of love. Now all I need is to drink some hot chocolate and get warm again!
Here are links for all three books. I highly recommend them!
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Hallo Cheryl,
Thanks for your review. You understood very well what I tried to tell the reader about the times, the different regimes and, at last, the gulags.
I am very pleased with your assessment of my trilogy and hope that my readers will allow themselves to be drawn into the historical circumstances and their influence on the lives of decent, powerless people.
Fond greetings, Sigrid
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