This is the remarkable story of Hertha Jurgens Schmidt, who was born in northern Germany in 1910. She grew up during the turbulent years of the Weimar Republic, marrying August Wilhelm Schmidt in 1932. Hertha bore eight children as she and her family witnessed the rise of the Nazis, suffered the deprivations brought on by WWII, and managed to escape the fury of the Soviet advance through eastern Germany in 1945. Read of her daring dash across the city of Berlin, which she made twice so she could smuggle her children into the Allied Zone, as well as her emigration to the United States. (296pp. illus. hardcover with jacket. Author, 2008.)