Final Destination A New Homeland

Bessarabia, Romania, 1940. For more than a century, the Grieb family has called this fertile land home. Though German by ancestry, Romania is the only homeland generations of their family have ever known. But as Europe is consumed by war and Soviet forces move into Bessarabia, the Griebs suddenly find themselves caught between two powerful nations—and forced to make an impossible choice. 

When Hitler offers ethnic Germans refuge within the German Reich, the family joins thousands of others abandoning their homes and begins an uncertain journey hundreds of miles west. They leave behind their farms, possessions, and everything familiar, believing Germany will provide the safety and new beginning they have been promised. 

Instead, they discover a country overwhelmed by war. Housing is scarce, families are shuffled from place to place, and young men are drafted into the German Army. Eventually, the Griebs are resettled on farms in occupied Poland—homes once belonging to families who have been forcibly removed under the Nazi regime. What was supposed to be a refuge becomes another life built upon fear, uncertainty, and the suffering of others. 

Then Germany’s war against the Soviet Union begins to collapse. 

As the Red Army advances westward, the Grieb family is torn apart. The men are ordered to fight while the women, children, and elderly are crowded onto trains and sent toward southern Germany. With little warning and no assurance they will ever see one another again, husbands are separated from wives, children from fathers, and brothers from sisters. 

When the war finally ends, survival is only the beginning. 

Across a devastated Europe filled with refugees and displaced families, the Griebs begin searching for one another with no reliable mail, no telephones, and no way of knowing who has survived. Armed only with names, memories, faith, and hope, they must somehow find their way back to the people they love. 

A story of war, displacement, separation, and the enduring strength of family, the Griebs’ journey reveals what it means to lose a homeland—and how far people will go to find their way home again.