Tag: stolen girl

Making Bombs for Hitler published in Ukraine

I am so very thrilled to have this novel finally available for Ukrainian readers. Yulia Lyubka’s translation is brilliant and I LOVE the cover art by Anya Styopina. Making Bombs and Stolen Girl tell the tale of two Ukrainian sisters torn apart by the Nazis in WWII. One is considered racially valuable and is kidnapped, brainwashed into thinking she’s German, and placed in a Nazi home. The other sister is considered not racially valuable, and is starved and worked nearly to death. Although these books are historical, they’re unfortunately also current because Putin channels Hitler and Ukrainians are currently going through this all again. The publisher is Books XI. In Canada they’re available through Koota Ooma.

Canadian Ukrainian Art Foundation Talk

It was an honour to be invited to speak at KUMPF gallery, and it was so nice to catch up with old friends and to chat with many young readers. I loved presenting amidst Bohdan Holowacki’s vast talent — see those paintings on the wall? His artwork will be exhibited until Dec 23! Thanks to Uliana Hlynchak for organizing, and thanks to Sonia Bodnar for reading the same selection from «Викрадене дитя» as I read in the original English edition of Stolen Girl. Yulia Lyubka is a brilliant translator, as everyone in the audience witnessed. It was a particularly emotional reading, as my husband was in the audience and the scene was based on his late mother’s escape from the Nazis. Lidia would have loved to hear this, especially in Ukrainian. Here is a FB video from the event.

Marta Humeniuk, whose parents were dear friends of my husband’s.

A visit to St. Josephat Catholic School

Halyna Kostiuk, Ukrainian teacher extraordinaire at St. Josephat Catholic School in Etobicoke, arranged for me to visit last Thursday with grade 7 and 8 students. They had been reading as a class my novel, Stolen Girl, the Ukrainian version. Many of the students are recent refugees from Ukraine, fleeing Putin’s brutal war.

It was poignant for me to speak with them about the real history behind Stolen Girl — victims of Hitler’s Lebensborn program — the kids who were kidnapped by the Nazis and brainwashed into thinking they were German and placed into German homes. This novel was written to fulfil a promise I made to my mother-in-law before she died. She had lost half of her classmates to the Lebensborn program in WWII and she felt very guilty the rest of her life for surviving while her friends didn’t.

For these students to be able to read this book in their own language is bittersweet, seeing as Putin is now channeling Hitler, and doing his own Lebensborn program, kidnapping Ukrainian children, brainwashing them, and placing them in Russian homes. So much for “never again.”

I cannot post photos of the students for privacy reasons, but here are pics with teachers. On the table that was prepared for me to display my books, note the beautiful orange roses the students presented me with, and the Roshen chocolates — yum! It was a Ukrainian-themed day because after the visit, I dropped by Pelman Perogies factory outlet for a LOT of mushroom potato perogies, then off to Koota Ooma to buy my sister a Christmas present.

With Halyna Kostiuk and Olga Shklar
With Halyna Kostiuk and Mar’yana Chornij

My own author copies of Stolen Child in Ukrainian!

It’s a dream come true to finally have one of my novels translated into Ukrainian and published in Ukraine. The translator is the brilliant Yulia Lyubka and the publisher is Books XXI. Stolen Child (Stolen Girl) holds a special place in my heart because it was written at the urging of my late mother-in-law, Lidia Skrypuch, who was a kid during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine and half of her classmates were victims of the Lebensborn program. That this translation is coming out now is sadly appropriate because the new Nazis, aka Putin’s Z army, are doing Lebensborn all over again: kidnapping Ukrainian kids, brainwashing them and placing them in Russian homes. My mother-in-law used to say that there was little difference between the Nazis and the Moskali: both were genocidal killers and thieves, but the Nazis had better boots.

This is a photo of my mother in law as a baby, before anyone in their family had an inkling of what the future would hold.

Stolen Girl now available in Ukrainian

Books XXI in Chernivtsi, Ukraine is publishing this beautiful edition of Stolen Child (Stolen Girl). Titled The Kidnapped Girl for this edition, the translation was done by the talented Yuliya Lyubka. More information can be found here. In Canada it will be available from Koota Ooma and other Ukrainian bookstores.

Stolen Girl: the Brantford connection

Many thanks to the Brant Family Literacy Committee for funding this presentation. Since I did this for a Brantford group, I decided to talk about Stolen Girl, which is set in Brantford just after WWII about a young refugee who has troubling memories of what she may have been doing during the war. As a Brantfordian, it was awesome to include some of my favorite local places, like the original Brantford Public Library, now Laurier Brantford, Central School, the Ukrainian Catholic Church of St John, Yates Castle, and the train station, as well as our old downtown and some of the stores that used to be there. Also the neighborhoods where the refugees of that era lived.