The Endless Steppe by Esther Hauztig is an autobiographical account of her family's exile to Siberia during the Second World War. As awful as it sounds, Esther's family was lucky that the worst they endured was Siberia.
Esther is a ten-year-old Jewish girl growing up in Vilna, Poland, at a time when the Russians were on the side of the Germans. Esther, her parents, and her father's parents, are loaded onto cattle cars, and shipped off to the endless steppes of Siberia. There are no trees, and there is hardly ever rain. The place is dry, desolate, and desert-like, and the winter hadn't even started yet.
Not only is Esther's family struggling to do the the work assigned to them, such as working in the mines, dynamiting, or crude farming, but they have worse living conditions, and are doing all they can to find food. The worst part is that being exiled was better than being captured by the Germans, especially after Russia chose to side with the English, and being sent off to the concentration camps.
Esther, her parents, and her grandparents, were some of the lucky few in her family who survived the war. The rest of them, save for an aunt and a couple of cousins, were killed in the camps.
This book, though simple in style, was difficult to read. Perhaps knowing that it was an autobiographical account is what made it hard to get through. I knew it was going to take a lot when the first chapter caused me to break down and cry. However, The Endless Steppe is very good to read if you want to see another side of Jewish survival during the Second World War.
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