Stolen years - Kazia Myers

1940 - Poland is under German and Russian occupation. Anna is just seventeen when the Gestapo snatch her from her native village. Together with a group of young people she is forced into slave labour at a remote farm in Austria, where their despotic 'owner', Herr Holtzman, keeps an ever-watchful eye over them. For five long years, Anna and her friends are subjected to relentless hard labour and appalling living conditions. Their miserable existence is punctuated by frequent incidents of Nazi cruelty, tragedy and death. Anna's enforced separation from her beloved Michal is the hardest blow to bear. Finally, the day of liberation arrives. Will she be reunited for good with Michal? Will she see her lost friends again, those who were her substitute family during her time in this hostile environment? Will she be able to return to her mother, whom she has so desperately missed? At the end of the war in 1945 Poland's future is decided by the Big Three: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. Anna too is faced with having to make momentous personal decisions, such that she had never imagined in her years of slavery when her only desire was to return home.