Displaced Person: A Girl's Life in Russia, Germany, and America

by Ella E. Schneider Hilton, Karl A. Roider (Foreword)

In her moving and deeply personal memoir, Ella E. Schneider Hilton chronicles her remarkable childhood -- one that took her from the purges of Stalinist Russia to the refugee camps of Nazi and postwar Germany to the cotton fields of Jim Crow Mississippi before granting her access to the American dream. Despite her hard life as a refugee, Ella finds solace in others and retains her indomitably inquisitive spirit. Throughout her ordeals, she never relinquishes hope or sight of her goal of education.
Poignantly and freshly rendered, this is a tale of determination. It is the story of a girl caught up first in the maelstrom of World War II and then in the complexities of American southern culture, adjusting to events beyond her control with resiliency as she searches for faith, knowledge, and a place in the world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography

280 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2003

Reviews

[Pearson, · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ella Schneider tells a very compelling story about her life, first in Kiev, Russia, then Germany during the WWII years, and finally, in Mississippi with her family as indentured servants for a year. It is a book about discrimination in many respects as she and her family are considered Russian by the Germans even though they are of German heritage,and, as second class citizens in the States once they emigrated.

[Polly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing life

[Tracy Juengst · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think with what is going on with the refugee crisis today in Syria, people should read how people over the years have been treated as refugees and this book talks about condition of European camps and being a sharecropper in the deep south. This was a deep rich story of Ella's experience. If you ever get to meet her, let her tell you a story about her life. I met her at a timeshare discussion of the book. I think it is time this book was made into a movie for people to have insight on the problems of being a refugee. You don't have the freedom of movement in some countries, or a job... for years. This was a great book, read it!

[Karola · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a story very similar to the upheavel my own parents went through in the Baltics and Europe during WWII.

[Jennie Howatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

These type of memoirs always remind me that I have a very cushy life.