In 1938, Richard Krebs, a German seaman, jumped ship in Newport News, Virginia and vanished into America. In December 1940, under the name Jan Valtin, he published the autobiography of his life, first as a communist revolutionist serving Stalin, next, as a Gestapo prisoner of the Third Reich, and finally of his escape from both of them. It became a national sensation. In 1942 he was imprisoned on Ellis Island as an enemy alien. In 1944-45 he served the United States as a combat infantryman in the jungles in the Pacific War.

“I have lived 60 years aware of my father’s very popular 1941 autobiography, “Out of the Night,” says Mr. Krebs. “It was controversial. It was shocking. It was extremely important in America as the US became engaged in World War II. What I never had a personal connection to was the time from 1942-1945 when my father was first arrested as an enemy alien and held in the prison on Ellis Island and then, when he was released, his quest to be the best soldier that he could be for the American Army. When my mother passed away in 2007, my brother found cartons of moldering letters in her tool shed in California. It has taken nearly ten years for me to come to grips with the passion, beauty and despair of his life at that time, and to attempt to share them 65 years after they were written.”