Underground Soldier

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-2437-9

192 pp.

Ages 8-12

January, 2014

OK–I admit it.  I love everything Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch writes.  Maybe it's because she writes to inform and touch, eloquently accomplishing both without teacher- or preacher-speak.  Maybe it's because we're both Ukrainian, though not all her stories have a Ukrainian focus.  Maybe it's just because she writes great books.  I suspect it's the latter but I would never deny the others.  I knew that I would appreciate Underground Soldier, as I did its prequels: Stolen Child (Scholastic Canada, 2010) and last year's Silver Birch Fiction award winner Making Bombs for Hitler (Scholastic Canada, 2012), reviewed here.  See if I'm not right.

Stolen Child focused on Larissa, a young Ukrainian girl, who struggles to deal with confusing memories before her adoption by a Ukrainian family in Brantford.  Her older sister, Lida, is the primary focus of Making Bombs for Hitler, as an enslaved Ostarbeiter taken by the Nazis.  Another Ukrainian, Luka Barukovich, becomes an ally of Lida's, though his escape from the camp hospital leaves her wondering and worrying about his fate.  Underground Soldier is Luka's story, from his escape to his desperate need to return to Kyiv (the largest city in Ukraine) and reconnect with his father who was taken to Siberia by the Soviets.

Sent to the camp hospital from whence most leave dead, Luka is encouraged by Lida to find a way out which he does, hidden in a truckload of dead bodies.  His escape from the truck is just the beginning of a tortuous journey towards the mountains that he knows will link with the Ukrainian Carpathians and home.  It's not surprising that, with the Nazis taking his mother and enslaving him while the Soviets arrested his father and oppressed the people of his homeland, Luka is cautious and suspicious of anyone he encounters on his journey.  The enemy is everywhere and everyone.  A Ukrainian-speaking German couple, Helmut and Margarete, are one of his first allies, though he has much to fear when he learns that both their sons are Nazis.  As he continues his trek, Luka is reminded of the many incidents, both personal and national, that have shaped his distrust of both the Nazis and the Soviets.  With the repeated and horrific losses of life and whole-scale destruction, Luka realizes Ukraine and its people are spoils of war, to take or destroy as need be.

His journey is helped when he meets Martina Chalupa, a Czech girl, whose skills in tracking, evading detection and survival are superior to his.  After they are helped at an underground hospital of the Ukrainian Red Cross, Luka and Martina join the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) to help protect and defend against both the Soviet Red Army, the NKVD (the brutal Soviet law enforcement agency) and the Nazis, both from targeted attacks, death camps, and large-scale destruction.  Even after Hitler commits suicide in 1945, UPA is still committed to fighting Stalin and his NKVD, as Luka is to finding his loved ones: his father, his mother and Lida.

Underground Soldier is not an action war story; it is a sobering tale of a people wedged between two evils with no "winning" possible.  Those who seek the thrill of an enemy-laden, gun-fighting game between good guys and bad guys will not find it here.  The horrors of war are evident as is the compulsion to save loved ones and survive.  But Underground Soldier is a more involved story, obviously painfully researched by Marsha Skrypuch, to include all aspects of World War II and its aftermath as endured by Ukrainians such as Luka, Lida and Larissa and by so many others.  The story revealed information that I could link to my own family's history, as I'm sure it will for many Ukrainians whose parents or grandparents lived through WWII in Ukraine and environs.

In this emotion-laden plot-driven story, Marsha Skrypuch will touch new readers to this trilogy and provide closure for those who've read Stolen Child and Making Bombs for Hitler.  There is no happy ending for any of war's victims, but by providing clarifying details and authentic experiences of those whose stories are embedded here, Marsha Skrypuch honours both the past and the future of Ukrainians and other victims of World War II everywhere.  Informing and touching, Underground Soldier is Marsha Skrypuch through and through.

Marsha Skrypuch: Author Event (Toronto)

YoungCanLit Author Marsha Skrypuch

 

 

presents her Silver Birch Fiction Award-winning novel

and 

2014 Kobzar Literary Award nominee

Making Bombs for Hitler

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-0730-3

186 pp.

Ages 8-12

2012

(Reviewed here)

   

and 

its new companion book

 Underground Soldier

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-2437-9

208 pp.

Ages 8-12

January 1, 2014

on
 
Wednesday January 29, 2014

 at 7 p.m.

St. Vladimir Centre
620 Spadina Avenue (below Bloor St.)
Toronto, ON

This presentation is part of A Series of Readings with the 2014 Kobzar Literary Award Nominees

In addition to a presentation about her books and launching Underground Soldier, books will be available for sale and autographing.

Making Bombs for Hitler: Book Launch

BOOK LAUNCH

for Marsha Skrypuch's

MAKING BOMBS FOR HITLER

the story of Lida, a young Ukrainian girl
who is taken by the Nazis in 1943 and forced into slave labour as an Ostarbeiter

Wednesday, March 7, 2012 

7:30-9:30 p.m.

At the UNF Toronto Community Centre

145 Evans Avenue

Etobicoke, Ontario

 

Marsha Skrypuch 

will present a brief talk about her book and then take questions from the audience.  Books will be available for sale and autograph.

This event is sponsored by The World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations and the Ukrainian Women’s Organization of Canada, Toronto Branch

Making Bombs for Hitler

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-0730-3

186 pp.

Ages 8-12

2012

The title of Marsha Skrypuch's newest book may blindside you, even knock you senseless about reading it, but it would be a shame for anyone not to read this compassionate historical fiction about a little known tragedy of World War II.  As always, Skrypuch demonstrates that she is to be trusted and respected for her ability to transform even horrific history into gentle but honest and enlightening stories.

With Russian Communist rule in Ukraine and Stalin determined to destroy the country to keep it from the Germans coupled with the Nazis heading for Moscow by invading Ukraine, Ukrainians were in an unfortunate position, territorially and psychologically, during World War II.  Sadly, this senseless situation leads to the murder of eight-year-old Lida Ferezuk's father by the Russians and her mother by the Nazis.  Separated from her younger sister, Larissa, Lida is taken with numerous Ukrainian children to Germany to be Ostarbeiter (eastern workers) for the Nazis.

Housed in barracked camps, provided with no clothes or shoes, and essentially starved on watery broth once a day, Lida and other children are slave workers for the Nazis, kept only as long as they are useful.  After showing her skills with needle and thread, Lida is assigned to the Nazi laundry. But, after being gifted a cast-off shirt by the laundress, Officer Schmidt decides Lida has been too privileged and assigns her with five others girls to construct bombs in a compound away from the camp. 

With repeated defeats at the front, many Nazis retreat and, without supervision, the girls begin to sabotage the bombs to ensure they are ineffective.  But, relentless bombing by the Allies destroys the camp, allowing many to escape. Unfortunately, a number of them, including Lida, are captured and taken to a German town where their enslavement is reimposed under a man manufacturing ammunition.  Locked in a basement, they endure inhumane conditions, worsened when they are abandoned by the departing Germans feeling the threat of the Allied forces.

The inevitable arrival of Allied soldiers and their discovery of Lida and others brings the reader small pleasure, as the deaths of many and the images of the starved with legs turning to sticks and teeth loosening cannot be erased or ameliorated.  Even with their rescue and care by compassionate soldiers and nurses, the Ukrainian children are in jeopardy from the Soviets who view them as Nazis, deserving of punishment.  If they do survive the machinations of the Soviets to retrieve and punish them, many will spend years in displaced persons camps, waiting, hoping to be reunited with family.

This heart-breaking story, as told from Lida's young eyes and heart, offers an opportunity for our young readers to get a different perspective of World War II beyond the battles expounded upon in history books or Remembrance Day activities at school or the tragedy of the Jewish people.  It provides an opportunity to see war from a Ukrainian child's perspective, hopefully sparking discussions with grandparents or research to understand more fully the plight of so many during war.  [n.b.  I may begin my own research with A History of Ukraine by Paul R. Magocsi (University of Toronto Press, 1996)]

Being of Ukrainian heritage, recalling vague discussions about Ukrainians dealing with the enemy they knew and the enemy they didn't, I recognize that choices were more akin to gambles, made with the single goal of survival.  As Lida acknowledges, even with the difficulty in believing that people could be so cruel, they saw hope even when there was none, just as Lida tries to see beauty anywhere, just as her mother deemed it was possible.