Trapped in the Cold War: The Ordeal of an American Family

by Kate Field and Hermann Field

Book Overview

The disappearance behind the Iron Curtain of the American brothers Noel and Hermann Field in 1949, followed by that of Noel's wife and their foster daughter, was one of the most publicized international mysteries of the Cold War. This dual memoir gives an intensely human dimension to that struggle, with Hermann narrating all that happened to him from the day he was abducted from the Warsaw airport to his release five years later, and Kate relating...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804735905
• ISBN13: 9780804735902
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Length: 488 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Vivid and Important Tale

This account has a Kafkaesque quality of the rational man facing a totally irrational situation, trying to find meaning where there is no meaning, trying to seek understanding where there is no understanding. What is most vivid about Hermann Field's writing is his ability to convey a sense of immediacy. He brings us right into his prison cell with him. We share his bafflement about where he is, why he is there, and why interrogator "Cigarette" asks the questions he does. We also share his heightened sense of awareness of the minute details of his cell, from the number of pieces of straw on his mattress to the tiny friends he makes in his cell, beginning with the spider and continuing with the mice. We share his sense of grief and sorrow as the mice are brutally killed by the prison guards. Perhaps most striking is the immediacy he brings to the endless hours of interrogation. He allows us to feel his bafflement as his interrogators use every known technique to try to get him to confess. But confess to what? Surely there has been some giant mistake -- have they got the wrong man? Are we all lost in a world of delusion? He conveys a wonderful and dry sense of humor when he relates how his chief interrogator asks him, "What are you, actually?" He replies, "Well, surely you know that I am an architect." "'-- You're quite sure? Planning to build skyscrapers here? Not perhaps an archaeologist instead?' He gave a chuckle and looked at me as if we had a good mutual joke. His amusement had again spread to me." The excesses of Stalin are of course well known. What Hermann Field's book does, which I have not seen before, is to provide us with such a vivid account of the ripple effect of Stalin's monomaniacal desire to obliterate all enemies throughout the Soviet empire and the Soviet puppet states. I think this book is an enormously important contribution to our understanding of Stalinism and the Cold War. I have never come across a more enthralling account. Adding to the poignancy of the book is Kate Field's account of her bafflement at Hermann's mysterious disappearance and her ongoing struggle to search for clues as to whether he was alive or dead, and ultimately to bring him home.

A human being survives an inhuman system.

The book has two main threads: The geopolitics of the early years of the cold war and the experiences of a man arbitrarily imprisoned in Poland. It is written with striking honesty and intensity. The point of view is refreshingly different from the dogmatic positions of either of the superpowers at the time.Ironically, Hermann Field comes to be imprisoned because of his having aided communist refugees, among others, from Hitler's invasion of Eastern Europe. These refugees achieved positions of power after the war and are now to be purged by Stalin, with the aid of Hermann's coerced testimony. But Hermann, out of principal and loyalty to his friends, will not give false testimony. With no grounds for his arrest and no prospect of a trial, the Polish authorities have no choice but that Hermann should "disappear". This suits both sides since Hermann is regarded by the West as a fellow traveller, or even a communist spy who, like Philby, has rejoinded his masters in the Soviet Union.Meanwhile Hermann languishes as a political prisoner and is forced to develop his mental resources to fight boredom and preserve his sanity. This he does with an extrordinary upwelling of creativity which allows him to retain his identity and his Quaker principals. The book also records the experiences of Hermann's wife, Kate, who struggles to bring up his two sons while working to keep his plight in the public eye. Throught his imprisonment, Kate had no definite evidence that Hermann was even still alive.Hermann's eventual release, after nearly five years, is as much an accident of the cold war as was his arrest. Remarkably, at the end of it all, he retains his qualified admiration for the ideals of the communist revoultion.