[2] His memoir of his experiences, Coming Out of the Ice (1979), became the basis for a 1982 CBS-TV movie starring John Savage and country singer Willie Nelson.

[5][6] Herman was born in Detroit where his father, a Jewish immigrant from Ukraine,[3] was active in organizing unions at the Ford Motor Company.

During these years Herman focused on his prodigious athletic talents and he was eventually noticed and recruited by the Soviet Air Force which taught him how to parachute.

[4] Soviet authorities asked Herman to sign the World Record documents which included a blank space for citizenship which Herman filled in as "U.S.A." After continually refusing to change it to the U.S.S.R., he was arrested in 1938 for "counter-revolutionary activities" and spent a year in a local prison that included brutal tortures: he had to sit on a bench 18 hours a day unmoving and nonspeaking facing a door, he was beaten in his kidneys every night for 52 days straight, he was thrown into a cell with violent criminals who tried to kill him, and he received almost no food, among other things.

Herman was then sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in a Siberian gulag where he suffered extreme hardships including beatings, starvation, torture, and severe freezing temperatures.

Herman spent the next 20 years moving with his family to various locations in the USSR taking odd jobs as a boxing instructor, English-language teacher and farmer on a collective.