It is the year 1944 as the 19-year old German high school graduate, Dieter, is drafted by the Nazi army and sent into World War II, which by this time has already been long lost to the Allied Forces. Within months of being sent straight into the confusion and turmoil at the Eastern Front in Belarus he is taken prisoner by Russian forces. And so begins his long and harrowing odyssey through various Russian prisoner of war (POW) camps and an imprisonment that would extend far beyond the declared end of WWII.

This true-story is a concise narrative of a good-hearted young man and his struggle to survive through a time of distorted ideologies, horrid violence, starvation, disease and the devastatingly long, freezing Russian winters.