The Endless Steppe | The Endless Steppe

At a glance:

Author: Esther Rudomin Hautzig
First Published: 1968
Time of Work: 1941–1946
Setting: Vilna and Lodz, Poland, and Rubtsovsk, Siberia
Principal Characters: Esther Rudomin, Samuel Rudomin, Raya Rudomin, Anna Rudomin, Popravka
Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography, Children’s literature
Subjects: Adolescence, Exile or expatriates, Autobiography, World War II, Jews or Jewish life, Mines, miners, or mining, Poland or Polish people, Siberia or Siberians
Locales: Siberia, Lodz, Poland, Vilnius, Poland

Esther Rudomin Hautzig’s story, told in The Endless Steppe: A Girl in Exile, begins as it ends, in her native Poland. The sudden appearance of Russian soldiers in chapter I is as shocking an intrusion into Hautzig’s idyllic picture of upper-class European family life as their actual arrival in the Rudomin home in Vilna that morning in June, 1941. The security of the ten-year-old Hautzig’s world is shattered by the soldiers’ insistent ringing of the Rudomins’ doorbell. Her belief that parents are all powerful—that her father, “Tata” (the...

The Endless Steppe | The Endless Steppe

At a glance:

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