Interrupted journeys

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Ieva Neimanas Pipyne

"Half a Slice of Bread" is the powerful true story of a Lithuanian family caught in the turbulent political and military events of World War II--era Europe from 1941 to 1950. Desperate to escape the oppressive Soviet regime, the Neimanas family, including six-year-old Ieva, leave for Germany in 1941, where they hope to start a new life. Considered to be ethnic Germans by the Nazis, the family leaves with only what it can carry and boards a train toward an unknown fate. But to their horror, upon their arrival they are taken to a foreigner camp, where they are to be "Germanized." They are placed in wooden barracks, witness terrible abuses, and live under constant intimidation. In 1944, they receive permission to return to Lithuania, but their elation quickly turns to dismay when approaching Soviet artillery forces them to flee back the way they came. Little do they know that their struggle to find a safe haven is only just beginning.

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Geoffrey Wellum

"Geoffry Wellum tells the ... true story of his coming of age amid the roaring, tumbling dogfights of the fiercest air war the world has ever seen. It is the story of an idealistic schoolboy who couldn't believe his luck when the RAF agreed to take him on as a 'pupil pilot' at the minimum age of seventeen and a half in 1939. In his fervor to fly, he gave little thought to the coming war"--Jacket.

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Mary Morris

1939: Mary Mulry was eighteen years old when she arrived in London from Ireland to begin training as a nurse. She had hoped for an adventure and a new start; she could not have predicted what the next seven years would bring. In this extraordinary diary Mary recorded in intimate detail her experiences as a nurse on the Home Front and later working on the frontline in Europe. In Normandy, she tended to Allied soldiers and German prisoners of war. In war-torn Belgium, she witnessed harrowing casualties from the Battle of Arnhem. Yet, romance, glamour and adventure were never far away for Mary.

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Leo Melamed with Bob Tamarkin

He is one of the most powerful figures in the world of finance - a visionary who pioneered the modern futures industry and launched the International Monetary Market (IMM). A Holocaust survivor, Leo Melamed had barely begun the first grade in 1939 when he and his parents fled their native Poland one step ahead of the oncoming Nazi juggernaut. Crossing Siberia en route to a brief stay in Japan - just months before Pearl Harbor - the family arrived in the United States to begin life anew. They settled in Chicago, where young Leo became a product of the inner city and embraced his new country and its culture. Seeking part-time employment while attending law school, Leo Melamed answered a classified ad that would change his life. Hired by what he presumed was a law firm named Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Bean, he found himself on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. "I was Alice stepping through the Looking Glass into a world of not just one Mad Hatter, but hundreds. The shouting among the traders, the movement of their bodies and hands, captivated me like nothing before ... there was a life force on that floor that was magical and exciting, and though I didn't understand what was going on, I wanted to be a part of it.". Leo Melamed became much more than just a part of it. From modest beginnings as a pork belly trader, he led the Chicago Merc for the next quarter of a century, introducing finance to an industry that was the exclusive domain of agriculture. As his reputation as a financial genius grew, so did the tales of his larger-than-life personality. In Leo Melamed: Escape to the Futures, you'll meet the man behind the legend.