On the Run: A Latvian Family Chronicle

In On the Run, Canadian historian Modris Eksteins tells the tragic story of his original homeland Latvia before, during and after the Second World War. The book describes the fate of a stubborn part of Europe (the Baltics) through its inhabitants, in particular the author's own family.
On the Run is a delicate, suggestive and intelligent mixture of 'big' and 'small' history, and thus forms a historical handbook, family chronicle and autobiography at the same time. The author regards the German capitulation in 1945 - Stunde Null - as the turning point of the twentieth century. Never before had so many people been on their feet at the same time. Eksteins tries to find out how it could come to this that the lives of millions of people consisted of nothing other than running away from military and political developments.