Weeds Like Us

The uprooting of seven million civilians - women, children, and elderly men - from their homes in the German provinces of East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia following World War II is largely unknown in the United States.

Weeds Like Us is a gripping true adventure story about the author's own East Prussian family. The author's earliest years were spent in relative comfort on his grandfather's farm in East Prussia during World War II. For him, life in Hitler's Germany was the natural order of things. Then, in January 1945, just after the author's seventh birthday, the Russians rolled into East Prussia. Full of unexpected twists and turns, Weeds Like Us tells the story of what happened over the next six years, as the author's family tried to make its way safely to the West.

Gunter Nitsch was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, in December 1937. By the time he was thirteen years old, he had lived in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and in both the Soviet-Occupied Zone and the British-Occupied Zone in Germany. After he came to the United States in 1964, he obtained a Bachelors degree from Hunter College and an MBA from Pace University while studying at night. For most of his professional life, he worked as a marketing consultant to American and German firms at the German American Chamber of Commerce, followed by eight years at Bayerische Vereinsbank AG in New York City. Since his retirement he has devoted his time to writing. He and his wife live in Chicago, Illinois.