It is the summer of 1941.

Helmut is a seventeen-year-old high school student who speaks German, Russian and Ukrainian.

He lives in a village in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast of eastern Ukraine, which was then a part of the Soviet Union.

Hitler has launched his invasion of the Soviet Union, forcing the Soviet army to retreat from eastern Europe.

German troops have followed in their wake and have arrived in Helmut’s village.

They have found him and have assigned him to work as an interpreter for a unit of the SS.

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