Circumstances impelled Victor Grossman, a U.S. Army draftee stationed in Europe, to flee a military prison sentence: especially the icy pressures of the McCarthy Era. Grossman - a.k.a. Steve Wechsler, a committed leftist since his years at Harvard and, briefly, as a factory worker - left his barracks in Bavaria one August day in 1952, and
"Victor Grossman, a U.S. Army draftee stationed in Europe during the McCarthy Era, left his barracks in Bavaria one day in 1952, and swam across the Danube River from the Austrian U.S. Zone to the Soviet Zone. The Soviets moved him to East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic. There he remained, observer and participant, husband and father, as he watched the rise and successes, the travails, and the eventual demise of the GDR socialist experiment."--Provided by publisher.
