I am a Canadian-Ukrainian children’s author and former librarian. My great-aunt was a sniper with the Ukrainian underground, fighting both Hitler and Stalin. She was executed after the war by the Soviets and buried in a mass grave. Her mother was sent to a gulag in Siberia and never heard from again. I will never know all that happened to my ancestors, but I can give voice to others whose culture, life, and history were erased in the same way. Every novel I’ve written has delved into a piece of the past that has been shoved under the carpet for political reasons.
Hitler is dead, the war is over. Ukrainian sisters Krystia and Maria are reunited and finally safe in an American refugee camp. A familiar girl walks into their barracks claiming to be a fellow slave laborer, but she’s Sophie, a bully from the Hitler Youth. Before the sisters can turn her in, Sophie denounces the sisters as Nazi collaborators to Soviet soldiers who storm the barracks. Nothing could be further from the truth but the soldiers don’t care. All three girls are kidnapped and taken to the Soviet Zone for interrogation and imprisonment. Plunged into unimaginable danger, will the sisters be able to prove their innocence?
★ “Gripping, harsh, and superbly written.” – KIRKUS, starred review
I love this book first and foremost because Michelle Barker is a brilliant writer and this story gripped me. The setting is similar to Traitors Among Us, taking place in the Soviet Zone in Germany, after WWII, but Katja and her family are German. Unlike other post-WWII novels from a German perspective, Barker doesn’t cast the Germans as victims, but as people caught up in their own bubble of prosperity and ignorance until the bubble bursts and they’re confronted with their own guilt. Authentic and humble. A great book.
A brilliant historical YA that asks: how do you choose between survival and doing the right thing?
The arrival of the Soviet army in Germany at the end of World War II sends sixteen-year-old Katja and her family into turmoil. The fighting has stopped, but German society is in collapse, resulting in tremendous hardship. With their father gone and few resources available to them, Katja and her sister are forced to flee their home, reassured by their mother that if they can just reach a distant friend in a town far away, things will get better. But their harrowing journey…
Broken Stone delves into the complicated plight of ethnic Germans who lived in the Soviet Union before WWII and were persecuted by Stalin. This novel, based on the author’s family history, explores what happens when they escaped to Germany just in time for WWII. I love all of Gabriele Goldstone’s books because she delves into a part of WWII history that’s rarely told.
Mama is dead, Baby Emil is dead and Stalin's new rules are breaking up the family. Papa must stay behind and hide as 12-year-old Katya and her three younger siblings find their way to freedom in East Prussia. With Mama's sister, Aunt Helena, they board a train and flee for a new home with an aunt and uncle they've never met-relatives who don't want them. But when they reach the border, soldiers won't let Aunt Helena cross. That forces Katya to take responsibility for her siblings. What will life hold for Katya, her two sisters and her brother when they…
I love this book because it also deals with an aspect and perspective on WWII that isn’t commonly explored, and Karen Bass is such a good writer. This novel is about Kurt, a Canadian boy who wonders what his German grandfather did during WWII while drafted into the Wehrmacht. When Kurt goes to Germany to do some research, he finds out more than he would have liked.
Kurt's opa--or grandfather--has never been willing to talk about his time as a German soldier and Kurt has a deep feeling of anxiety about what he might have done during the war. He thinks of films he's seen, like Schindler's List, and hopes his grandfather couldn't have been involved in atrocities. Spending a year in Germany seems like a good chance to find out more, or at least to improve his German.
One day he visits the graveyard in the town he's living in (just outside Berlin) and an old man speaks to him, calling him by his grandfather's name,…
This is a page-turning novel set near the end of WWII about a topic rarely touched in fiction: The death battles between Poles and Ukrainians, who both feared losing their country to the Nazis, the Soviets, and then each other. A ton of research went into this eye-opening novel about Tolya, the half-Polish, half Ukrainian soldier who will be deemed a traitor no matter what he does.
Poland, 1944. After the Soviet liberation of Lwow from Germany, the city is a battleground, its loyalties torn between Poland and Ukraine. Tolya is half-Ukrainian, half-Polish, and he joined the Soviet Red Army just to stay alive. When he shoots his political officer in the street, he's taken in by a squad of insurgent Ukrainians. Tolya doesn't trust them and especially doesn't trust Solovey, the squad's young war-scarred leader. He doesn't know just how well Solovey understands the cost of looking out for life over loyalty. Then a betrayal sends both on the run.
This isn’t a novel, it’s a history book for those who would like to delve more deeply into the time when so many young people were trapped between two enemies. Most historians stick to western Europe, which is the vanilla version of WWII. The bulk of the battles between the Soviets and Nazis took place in what’s now Poland and Ukraine. Timothy Snyder explores this in eye-opening detail.
Americans call the Second World War "the Good War." But before it even began, America's ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens-and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war's end, German and Soviet killing sites fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. ? Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of…
Four years old and homeless, William Walters boarded one of the last American Orphan Trains in 1930 and embarked on an astonishing quest through nine decades of U.S. and world history.
For 75 years, the Orphan Trains had transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast into homes in the emerging West, sometimes providing loving new families, other times delivering kids into nightmares. Taken by a cruel New Mexico couple, William faced a terrible trial, but his strength and resilience carried him forward into unforgettable adventures.
Whether escaping his abusers, jumping freights as a preteen during the Great Depression, or infiltrating Japanese-held islands as a teenage Marine during WWII, William’s unique path paralleled the tumult of the twentieth century—and personified the American dream.
WINNER, DA VINCI EYE AWARD FOR COVER DESIGN, ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARDS
HONORABLE MENTION, ERIC HOFFER BOOK AWARDS, E-BOOK NONFICTION
FINALIST, NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS, E-BOOK NONFICTION
FINALIST, NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS, MEMOIRS (Overcoming Adversity)
HONORABLE MENTION, READERS' FAVORITE BOOK AWARDS, GENERAL NONFICTION
From 1854 to the early 1930s, the American Orphan Trains transported 250,000 children from the streets and orphanages of the East Coast into homes in the emerging West. Unfortunately, families waiting for the trains weren’t always dreams come true—many times they were nightmares.
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