The book manuscript was completed at the beginning of 1992. The authors offered it to all Kaliningrad publishing houses that existed at that time. The reviews were entirely positive, but no one dared to undertake the publication of the book: the topic seemed too “delicate.” “It cannot be published in its present form. It requires radical reworking." Based on this instruction, the publishing house presented the authors with a sixteen-page list of comments demanding that they exclude about eighty fragments from the text and remove some photographs that “denigrate” our past. After refusing to fulfill these requirements, the book's printing set was destroyed. It is based on the memories of the first settlers who arrived from different parts of the Soviet Union to the lands of the former East Prussia shortly after the end of World War II. Their stories complement the documents of that time. The reader can get acquainted with the various stages of settlement of the Kaliningrad region: recruitment, moving, first impressions, getting a job, searching for housing, the life of the first settlers, etc. It also tells about the life of the Germans who remained in the new Russian region after the war, about their relationships with Soviet people, about the deportation of the German population to Germany.