Donbas: The True Story of an Escape from the Soviet Union - Paperback

by Jacques Sandulescu (Author)

The almost unbelievable, but true story of a teen-age boy's survival and triumph over hardship in a Russian slave labor camp -- ending in a breathtaking escape -- DONBAS has proven appeal for middle- and high school students and has been taught in schools. It's a book that holds kids (and adults) to the last page and gives them a new awareness and appreciation of what they've got -- and what life might one day ask of them. It's a book that puts you in its author's tattered shoes, makes you feel his cold, hunger, and pain, his homesickness and determination to live, and ask yourself: Would I survive "Riveting suspense . . . Once started I could not stop, once done could not forget it. Ever." The Berkshire Eagle "Simply written, direct and extraordinarily moving . . . an unassuming statement of deep affirmation." The New York Times Book Review "Excellent portrayal of a youth's indomitable spirit and will to survive." Library Journal

Author Biography

Jacques Sandulescu (1928-2010) was born in Romania and was arrested by soldiers of the occupying Soviet Red Army in January 1945, at age sixteen, because he looked big and strong enough to work. After his escape from Russia, he made his way to the New World, where he was a pro heavyweight fighter, interpreter in the US Army and the UN, jazz bar owner, actor (you saw him say "Is that your purse?" in "Trading Places," "Liberty!" in "Moscow on the Hudson," and "What the hell is ANSKY?" in a memorable New York Yankees commercial), and author. More than 50 years after his escape, Jacques returned to the Donbas region where he'd been a prisoner, a story told in the epilogue of this book.