Birgitta Gottlieb McGalliard

This is told first hand by author Birgitta who was a newborn baby girl when her prominent father was captured by the Soviets in 1944. He was attempting to flee across the Turkish border with his fellow diplomats from the German Legation in Sofia, Bulgaria. Roland Gottlieb is her father’s name. Sadly, He must leave behind, a daughter he's never seen, Brigitta, his Swedish-born wife, and two young daughters. Birgitta shares what life is like for her family before and during World War II and what it is like afterwards growing up in Sweden without her father. For six long years the family lives in uncertainty of where Pappa is in the vast Soviet Gulag, or if he is even alive. Then a returning POW informs them that he had been with Roland Gottlieb in Vorkuta, Siberia just shortly before his own return. With this new evidence, her mother’s despair changes to hope, only to be dashed two years later when another POW claims to have buried Gottlieb in the Siberian tundra. With all hope gone, Birgitta’s mother is about to remarry when a post card turns their lives upside down again. Lives Divided is a true story of human suffering and endurance, in which a stubborn will to survive triumphs over the horrors of World War II and its aftermath.


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