Winterkill

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic

978-1-338-831-41-2

288 pp.

Ages 8-13

September 2022

 

Our way of life was being erased. We had to figure out a way to escape before we were erased too. (pg. 38)

With a war currently raging in Ukraine, it's easy to remember that Ukraine has suffered oppression for centuries. As it sought independence and freedom, the country was repeatedly targeted and made to suffer. Winterkill is but one story of an attempt to quash a people with a strong cultural identity and fervor for autonomy. 

In 1930, 12-year-old Nyl Chorny lives on a small farm with his parents and younger siblings Yulia (11) and Slavko (9) in the village of Felivka near Kharkiv. Ukraine is currently under the control of the Soviet Communists led by Stalin whose five-year-plan to modernise the country is really aimed at hurting Ukrainians by eliminating small family farms and combining them under large collectives called kolkhozes. Some villagers are buying into the lies told by Comrades Tupolev and Chort–Russians charged with governing them–and shock workers promising tractors, increased grain, and better opportunities. But for those like Tato, Nyl's father, the collectivisation is just a replacement for landlords and will have nothing to do with them. Still, they must abide by the demands of Communist workers who inventory all their goods, ban religious faith, and requisition their grain with the threat of being labelled kulaks and executed or deported. Some Communists are foreign specialists like Canadian George White who will be working at the future tractor factory and truly believes in Communism as does his young daughter Alice. Others have just found a new way to bully and exert control and gain wealth at the expense of others.

 

If you want to eat, join the kolkhoz. (pg. 50)

 

Still the family farms as best they can, managing with less after Nyl's Uncle Illya is executed for being a kulak, and Auntie Pawlina and baby cousin Tanya move in with the family. A bumper crop of wheat, millet and corn in the summer of 1930 has them all hopeful again and the family considers leaving the Soviet Union via Auntie's cousins in Ternopil, a city across the border in Polish Ukraine. But all those dreams go up in smoke when soldiers steal all the grain while the families celebrate the harvest.

Relying on foraging, hunting and fishing for food, and no way to get money needed for travel, Nyl and Slavko steal away to work in Kharkiv where the tractor plant needs construction workers. But what they find there is as dismal as at home though they are able to make some money. Still, what they return home to is worse than they could have expected. Whether any of them will ever survive, much less escape, a genocide by starvation and violence is Nyl's story to tell.

Winterkill is a big story. It is so big that I can't possibly reveal all the details and nuances of Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's story in a short review. There are good people and evil ones, both Ukrainian and Russian. There is joy and heartache, resourcefulness and laziness, greed and generosity. And there is oppression. Though much of Winterkill deals with the Holodomor, the 1932-1933 genocide of Ukrainians by starvation, it's a story that's bigger than that. It's about that oppression of people and culture. There is resilience, as Nyl demonstrates with his story, but there is death and destruction and horrific suffering. And Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch tells it with such authenticity that this book of historical fiction could be a biography. Still, she tells it with sensitivity and compassion and allowed this  Ukrainian-Canadian to read it with appreciation, albeit filled with sorrow.

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Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch will launch Winterkill at the Brantford Public Library’s downtown branch on Thursday, November 24, 2022, at 6 p.m. Copies of the book will be available for purchase from Green Heron Books for signing by the author.  

Traitors Among Us

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic

978-1-338-75429-2

288 pp.

Ages 8-13

September 2021

 

Do what you can, Maria, instead of worrying about what you can't. (pg. 21)

Everyone has their story. But is it the one they lived or just a story? Among the refugees from the Nazis, there are both kinds of stories, and sisters Krystia and Maria Fediuk from Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's earlier books, Don't Tell the Nazis and Trapped in Hitler's Web, can only be sure of what they've lived through and what they are willing to share.

It's June 1945 and the two Ukrainian sisters have made their way, separately and then together, from their town of Viteretz through Austria and now into the Karlsfeld camp in the American Zone in Germany, hopeful that this stop will help get them to their aunt and uncle in Toronto. But the Soviets, under the guise of repatriating refugees from Eastern Europe but really to punish them as traitors and silence them, take Krystia and Maria and several others into the Soviet Zone for interrogation before choosing how to deal with them.

With fellow prisoners Sophie, a former Hitler Girl, and Volksdeutsche father and son Elias and Finn, they are locked away, fearful that their roles in helping both the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and Jews escape will have them sent to Siberia or worse. Drawing strength from their memories of their father and their mother, the girls make sure that they tell only one story, regardless of threat of death or worries for the other. But will it be enough to keep them alive? And who can they trust? When anyone can be a traitor, whether lowly prisoner, local cook or NKVD officer, the girls know only that they can rely on each other. They may only be 14 and 16 years of age, but Maria and Krystia have a lifetime of strength and suffering to help them survive.

Don't Tell the Nazis (2018)

Trapped in Hitler's Web (2020)

Traitors Among Us (2021)

If you've read the first two books in Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch's trilogy about the Fediuk sisters, and I encourage all readers to immerse themselves in these earlier stories, you'll know the depth of heartache and hardship that Krystia and Maria and others have endured at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets. Their experiences are not foreign to most in western Ukraine who were wedged between two dangerous oppressors and hoped that immigration to other countries might help them survive. Old enemies or new enemies are still enemies. From the girls' terror of Soviet and Nazi occupation in Ukraine, their enslavement by the Nazis and finally their seeking refuge with the Allies before imprisonment as traitors to the Soviets, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch informs young readers about stories seldom told of World War II. War is not just for soldiers and sometimes the civilians living through it are young people and their stories are compelling and tragic. But Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, a master storyteller of historical fiction as well as of picture books, non-fiction and realistic middle-grade and YA, takes us to those war-torn countries to travel with the girls as they walk dusty roads with thousands of refugees, toil on farms, hide from dangerous people, and find and offer support, even as they endure hunger, cold, fear and uncertainty. Every atmospheric scene is one of edge-of-your-seat nerves, worry that the next ally they make may not be one, shock at executions witnessed, and solace from a sisterly bond and fleeting memories of home.

 

There have always been traitors among them, but Krystia and Maria are able to find the hope and strength to achieve an ending to their story that satisfies, courtesy of Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, and young readers will appreciate that ending, acknowledge the stories that took them there and learn the history that started them on those journeys.

 

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Author Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch will launch her new book virtually through the Brantford Public Library on December 1st. Register at calendar.brantfordlibrary.ca for an opportunity to hear this acclaimed author speak and read from Traitors Among Us.

 

Don't Tell the Enemy

Written by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Scholastic Canada

978-1-4431-2839-1

184 pp.

Ages 10-14

January 2018

The Soviets have oppressed the Ukrainian homeland of twelve-year-old Krystia Fediuk for centuries but their occupation since 1939 has been a reign of terror for the Ukrainians, Poles and Jews in the town of Viteretz with appropriation of homes, imposed hunger, deportation to slave camps and execution.  With the Germans marching into Ukraine in 1941 and the Soviets fleeing, there are initial hopes and even proclamations of Ukrainian independence.  But the good spirits that come with the egress of their oppressors and the bestowing of food, as well as the opening of the church, are soon suspended as the Nazis begin to show their true objectives.

Krystia, her younger sister Maria and their mother Kateryna live amongst a diverse neighbourhood of Jewish, Ukrainian and Polish families of both modest and wealthier means and a Catholic church with resident priest, surrounded by farms.  Some residents are already gone, whether deported to Siberian slave camps, executed by trigger-happy Soviets or in hiding from the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, like Krystia's Uncle Ivan.  Regardless of atrocities, life must go on, and that includes taking their cow Krasa to pasture daily, tending to the garden, feeding the chickens and fetching water, always keeping their heads down to avoid suffering the wrath of the Soviets.  But when the Germans roll in, their community begins to change in different ways.  In addition to the Nazis, refugees from Germany as well as Volksdeutsche–ethnic Germans from Slav countries–begin to flood the area and force the displacement of residents.  Then the summons from Commandant Hermann begin, first naming a hundred Jewish men and declaring them to be murderers of those imprisoned by Soviets. The community is stunned when the men are shot and amassed in a single grave. 

The terror of the Nazis escalates with their acceptance of Aryan, German and Volksdeutsche as The Master Race and all others as subhuman, with particular targetting of the Jewish people, both in mass executions and then segregation into a Jewish Ghetto.  After her Auntie Iryna goes to live with the insurgents in their forest encampment, Krystia takes on the role of courier of photos and falsified documentation.  With food rationed to starvation levels, fines imposed for random acts and their Jewish friends in danger of imminent death, Krystia and her mother take increasing risks to survive and help their friends and family. 

...that the way to honor our family and friends was to be strong and to live and to tell their stories. (pg. 177)

Based on the true story of Kateryna Sikorska and her daughter Krystia Korpan, Don't Tell the Enemy reveals the often overlooked position of Ukraine during World War II when the terrorism historically imposed by the Soviets escalated to horrors which many believed would be appeased by the Germans.  But invasion is invasion and oppression is still that.  The shift from the Soviets persecuting all in their community to the brutality levelled by the Nazis against the Jewish people and those who might help them is especially tragic.  A simple life of family and work now becomes an exercise in survival and even more perilous with the pitting of groups of people.  No one should have to choose.  While some appear to do so easily and heartlessly, there are others like Krystia and her family who demonstrate incredible courage and resilience in the face of death and fear.  Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch in her author's notes mentions that she almost wrote this as a piece of non-fiction but chose to tell it as a fictionalized account to do the story justice.  She chose well and admirably tells a story that needs to be read to appreciate the circumstances of those living in western Ukraine during World War II when enemies were plentiful, dangers ubiquitous, survival precarious and a few good people could make all the difference.

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Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch launches Don't Tell the Enemy next week in Brantford Ontario.  The author is a passionate speaker and sure to captivate attendees with her reading and sharing of writing this new book.  Details about the launch are provided here.

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.

Graffiti Knight

by Karen Bass

Pajama Press

978-1-927485-53-8

288 pp.

Ages 12+

August, 2013

Many books of historical fiction focus on the atrocities and hardships of war time but few examine the aftermath of war, especially for civilians in the defeated countries.  Children's fiction and non-fiction of life in Nazi Germany abound, particularly for those who were victimized by the Nazis.  But, after Germany's surrender in 1945, its lands were divided between four occupation zones administered by the British, Americans, French and Soviets, as well as having certain lands inhabited by Germans recovered by Poland and Czechoslovakia. This is the story of Wilhelm Tauber and his family and friends as they endure life in the town of Leipzig in the Soviet-controlled sector of Germany.

Wilhelm, who prefers to be called Wilm, as he perennially tells his father, has much that angers him about Leipzig's current circumstances.  His father, who returned from war without one leg, is bitter about his loss and limited opportunities, and is regularly antagonistic to Wilm. His mother works as much as she can to help provide for the family.  His older sister, Anneliese, spends much of her time in her room, except when she goes to work, dressed in boy's clothing.  His friend, Georg, whose father died in the war, is essentially starving.  His friend, Karl, has a father who was taken to a POW camp but he knows nothing else of his fate.  And school is tedium for Wilm, doing well in math but only when applicable to real life.  But the harassment of the Schupos, the German police under Soviet control, and the Soviets themselves, have created a prison for all in Leipzig, restricting their movements, their food, their opinions–all their freedoms–and evoking fear, compliance and silence.  But nothing can compare to the anger Wilm experiences when he learns that Anneliese was raped by four Soviet soldiers at the train station where she went to meet her boyfriend, Ernst Weber, who promptly dropped her because she was no longer "untouched".

The game that Wilm, Karl and Georg regularly played, spying on the Schupos, pretending to be behind enemy lines and collecting intelligence for the Americans, becomes more real after Wilm begins taking chances to humiliate the Schupos and the Soviets, starting with the slashing of tires on several Soviet vans.  An older man, Otto Steinhauer, an engineer contracted to inspect bridges, intercedes when Karl and Wilm begin fighting over Wilm's negligence.  Soon Otto becomes a mentor to Wilm teaching him about bridges, math and engineering, as well as talking with him about Wilm's father, dealing with those in authority, and trust.

With the continued hostilities from the Soviets and the Schupos, including that of Anneliese's ex-boyfriend, Ernst, now a Schupo, Wilm feels compelled to escalate his attacks, becoming known as the Marionette Wolverine for the stickman puppet graffiti he leaves as his mark. But Wilm's resolve to get an innocent Georg released from jail has him questioning his own motives and actions, particularly after a final explosive act forces him to flee Leipzig, with friends and family in tow.  What begins as civil disobedience in search of justice becomes a harrowing escape, jeopardizing the lives of all for whom he cares.

Karen Bass' thorough research, as she describes in her Historical Notes at the back of the book, provides the authentic background for Graffiti Knight, challenging all that readers might think they know about Nazi Germany and its aftermath.  While all will see the Nazis as the criminals to humanity, we often forget that for others, the Soviets were just as barbaric to their victims, using some different means to oppress.  By seeing Leipzig and other parts of Germany through the eyes of a young man of sixteen, who lives through World War II but experiences further injustice in its aftermath, when so many were celebrating victory, Karen Bass provides enlightenment via a new perspective.  Heroes are not just made in war.  Courage and compassion, the virtues of heroes anywhere and anytime, can make a knight out of anyone, even Wilm.