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The Hidden Door

Would it still be there? As he dressed, he wondered if it remained hidden after sixty years, in spite of the turmoil that had surrounded it. Behind that door, if it still existed, were memories his mind tried so hard to reconcile, but without success. He hoped its opening would end a lifetime of debt he had been unable to repay.

His face contorted and his cheeks moistened. To repay them he would have to relive events, painful events that tore at his being. It hurt. Dear God, it hurt! Quickly, the back of his forearm rubbed across his eyes. It would not do for his wife to see this. His face returned to normal as if the arm’s movement swept the torment from is features and buried his tortured emotions. Aaron sat still as his mind regained control.

A sigh escaped his lips as he raised from the hotel bed and his seventy two year old legs protested. Stiffly, he walked to an open window that beckoned. Stretching beneath him, lay the city of his youth. Its current prosperity and peacefulness belied the horrible things it had witnessed and its people had experienced. He took a deep breath.

To Aaron, the air he breathed contained the suffering, the happiness, the very souls of countless humans who had lived in this ancient city and land; a place so steeped in the history of sword and sickle. He made his journey for a communion with those souls. His body was old and it would resist his efforts, but his spirit was stronger.

He would do this.

He would do it for himself.

He would do it for them.

With this prologue to The Hidden Door, Aaron Hiembergen begins his painful pilgrimage back 60 years into his youth, back to a time of terror when life was a thing to cling to from one day to the next. He and fellow survivor Lilyanna Goronavich return to Kiev to pay homage to those who saved them after June 22, 1941, when Adolf Hitler unleashed his armies on the Soviet Union. Following the launching of, "Barbarossa.," the surprise Nazi military operation, the largest and most horrible series of land battles in all history occurred. Millions died in the crucible of battle and the tyrannies that followed. In the West, little is known of these events. Historical timetables, military movements, regional and religious customs, even military equipment from this conflict were thoroughly researched and are accurately portrayed in the writing of this novel.

"The Hidden Door" follows the lives of individuals caught in the tragedy. Two families, the Goronavichs and the Hiembergens, struggle to survive in the Kiev area of Ukraine. Their lives are battered, as one ruthless corrupt system is replaced by one even more sadistic and barbaric. German and Soviet soldiers involved in the war experience its horrors and witness the unbelievable suffering inflicted by its aftermath. Events in their lives are chronicled over a six-month period as their paths converge at one of humanities most shameful events, the massacre at BabiYar. They attempt to cope with the oppression, destruction, and death surrounding them, fighting for their right to live, love and to have hope for the future.