Surviving Silence: A Son's Account of His Father's Journey Through Soviet Captivity

Presumed dead. Forgotten by the world. But he survived.

In 1939, Hubert Gawenda was an ordinary man—a chimney sweep, a husband, and a father—when he was drafted into the German Army and sent to the Eastern Front. Like countless others, he disappeared behind Soviet lines, swallowed by a brutal prisoner-of-war system where survival was uncertain and identity could mean death.

For four harrowing years, he endured starvation, forced labor, and relentless winters in Soviet captivity. In a desperate moment that would determine his fate, he exchanged jackets with a fallen comrade—an act that saved his life but erased him from his family’s world. Back home, they mourned him as dead.

But he wasn’t. He came back.

What returned, however, was not just a man—but a silence.

In Surviving Silence , Peter Bodo Gawenda, Ed.D., reconstructs his father’s extraordinary journey through fragments of memory, personal accounts, and historical research. What emerges is a deeply personal and haunting portrait of survival, resilience, and the enduring weight of unspoken trauma.

This is more than a war memoir. It is a story of:

• Survival against unimaginable odds
• The hidden toll of war long after it ends
• A son’s mission to preserve a father’s truth before it is lost to time

For readers of World War II history, memoir, and human endurance, Surviving Silence offers a rare and intimate perspective—one that gives voice to the millions whose stories were never told.

For readers of World War II history, memoir, and human endurance, Surviving Silence offers a rare and intimate perspective—one that gives voice to the millions whose stories were never told.

If you’ve ever wondered what happens after survival… this story will stay with you.