Gerda Fadden

Leaving Odessa Gerda Fadden

For Gerda Fadden, Odessa, the city of her birth, was a lifelong enigma. "Deep inside me," she wrote, "is a longing for a continuous connection" with the harbor city on the Black Sea. She left Odessa as a small child, when her family fled from Stalin's Russia and arrived in Germany at a time when Hitler was preparing the country for war. Gerda survived countless bombing raids, separation from her mother and father, and humiliating abuse for being half-Russian. In 1949, Gerda arrived in America, where she would begin a new life, one rich in accomplishments. But she never turned her back on those who had been left behind. Leaving Odessa is not only her story. In these pages, she also tells of her aunt who was subjected to unimaginable torture in a Russian Gulag, and the plight of other family members who were caught in the crossfire of war. In this, her Memoir, she has, in painstaking detail, renewed her connection with the past. Leaving Odessa is about love and war and family. Most of all, it is a testament to a little girl's largeness of spirit in the face of overwhelming adversity.