At age 18, Sylvia Pollack began smuggling people from East Germany to West Germany. Things were going well, then she was setup by the East German security force, the Stasi. After 3 months in an East German jail without her family knowing what had happened to her, she had a mock trial and was sentenced to 5 years in an East German prison. Silvia grew up in both West Germany and East Germany with family on both sides of the wall. She was a member of the Young Pioneers, a mandatory, communist youth group not unlike the Hitler Youth of the Nazis. She lived in the different worlds of democracy and socialism and gives examples of life behind the iron curtain.