Elvera Reuer the Author

In 1984, at the age of 54, Elvera Ziebart Reuer published The Last Bridge, her first autobiographical story based upon childhood memories of being one of 93,000 displaced Germans herded by Nazi soldiers and hunted by Red Russian soildiers during World War II.

Born of German parents in Strasburg, Bessarabia on the Black Sea, Elvera was just ten years old when she, her five siblings, and her widowed mother abruptly began what would become an often terrifying nine-year homeless trek across Europe, narrowly escaping torture and death several times. In what could be explained only by miracles, Elvera’s journey ended in grateful emigration to the United States, landing in New York with a only a single one-hundred dollar bill. Follow the Ziebart family escape»

Decades after earning American citizenship, Elvera’s past remained too painful a memory to share. But the 1980 passing of her mother finally motivated Elvera to pen her personal recollections in tribute to the fearless woman whose intuition and intellect saved her family’s lives.

The history of Anglo-Saxon settlers in Russia who were trapped in the misfortune of Hitler’s war was not widely recorded and is not well known to this day. The Last Bridge and Elvera’s 1998 sequel, A Distant Promise, A New Beginning, provide poignant and insightful pieces to a continental history puzzle.

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