Introduction

This is a historical novel, a fictional story based on historical facts.

The Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust

The book begins in the summer of 1942, in the Warsaw ghetto at the start of the great Aktion of deporting the Warsaw Jews to the death camp Treblinka.

A pair of young doctors, Leo and Rachel, with a 4-year-old son Adam, try desperately to escape the deportation and death. They are initially successful but eventually they are caught by the death machine and taken to the Umschlagplatz for the trip to Treblinka. They escape from the Umschlagplatz, and later from the ghetto, just before the ghetto uprising, to hide on the Aryan side. Adam is sent to a Catholic family and Leo organizes the hospital at the edge of a huge forest near Warsaw, mostly for the partisans fighting against the Nazis. They all survive WWII but Rachel succumbs later to ovarian cancer.

Post-War and Political Turmoil

The second part of the book starts at the end of 1952, under a communist regime, when Leo is already a Professor of Cardiology and treats prominent Polish politicians. At that time in the Soviet Union, 14 members of The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were executed and many prominent Jewish doctors were arrested in the trumped-up case of The Murderers in the White Coats, accused of trying to kill Soviet politicians, including Joseph Stalin.

Leo is called to Moscow to treat the visiting Polish Prime Minister because all Russian doctors, terrified by the arrest of their colleagues, are afraid to treat him. When in Moscow, Leo is entrusted with the secret mission to notify the West that Stalin and the KGB are planning to deport all the Jews to Berybidzhan in Eastern Siberia.

Love and Interrogation

He meets Tanya, a young doctor, daughter of the most prominent Russian lady scientist, who is now exiled to Kazakhstan for her membership in The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Tanya looks like the younger sister of his late wife, Rachel, and Leo and Tanya fall in love almost immediately.

Leo is brutally interrogated in Moscow by the KGB but is released with the help of the Polish Prime Minister. He returns to Warsaw and shortly later attends a Cardiology conference in Switzerland. There, he is run over by a truck driven by a KGB agent but escapes with only a broken arm. Afterwards, he drives to Paris where he reports the KGB plans to the US Embassy.

Reporting and Rescue Missions

The embassy officials don't fully believe his story, but when the papers report the beginning of court proceedings against the Jewish doctors, his story gains more understanding.

He is received with more appreciation at the Israeli Embassy and is flown to Tel-Aviv to report to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion on the plight of the Russian Jews.

As a result of his mission, major US and Israeli newspapers report on Stalin's and the KGB's plans to deport Russian Jews.

Later, Leo goes to Moscow with his son Adam to rescue Tanya from the threat of arrest and deportation. They get married and, using false papers and big bribes, manage to return to Poland in a nail-biting escape.

Stalin's Death and Aftermath

Stalin is seriously ill but has jailed his personal physician. He becomes more paranoid and threatening to one of his closest hangmen, who decides to eliminate this danger. Stalin's death ends all plans of Jewish deportation to Siberia.