Robert Frimtzis (born 1930) is the author of From Tajikistan to the Moon, a memoir of his life in Bălţi, Bessarabia (present-day Moldova). In June 1941, at the age of eleven, his town was destroyed by the Nazi Luftwaffe. He survived World War II by running 3000 miles across Ukraine, Russia and Uzbekistan to Tajikistan. Hunger forced him to quit school and get his first full-time job at the age of twelve, while his father, mobilized into the Red Army, fought in the Battle of Stalingrad, where he was wounded.