UNDERGROUND SOLDIER by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
“The corpses around me provided an odd sort of
comfort…” The first sentence of this
young people’s novel sets the scene.
This will not be a light easy story.
Caught in the middle of World War II, Luka is a young
teenager in Kyiv. He is captured and shipped to Germany as an Ostarbeiter
[eastern worker], a forced labourer in a munitions factory. Luka escapes, under those corpses, and
attempts to make his way back home to Kyiv to find his family.
The reader learns very much about survival, persistence,
and a child’s determination to reach family and home. Luka’s experiences are so detailed that one
stops breathing along with him when he is again and again in danger of being
discovered by this guard or that soldier. He must make decisions that an adult would
have difficulty with. Luka grows up the
hard way. He is on a mission to find his
parents and a friend, Lida, in the maelstrom of war, and risks everything to do
so.
The reader learns so much through Luka’s experiences about
history, warfare, medicine, pharmacology, and human relations. Skrypuch is a meticulous researcher, and the
reader learns about everything from dressing your wounds with fresh cow’s milk
to knowing how to walk in the woods in another’s footprints to avoid
detection. The horrific history of
Ukraine during the war and the battles against both the Nazis and the Soviets –
and the unbelievable inhuman cruelty of both – are shown on a personal
level. The friendships are also there –
of Luka and David, his Jewish friend in Kyiv, and of Luka and his escaped Czech
trek-mate Martina. Luka’s life in the
UPA – the Ukrainian Insurgent Army is related in detail, and demonstrates the
international make-up of this underground army fighting on two fronts with no
external support other than the local population.
A map of Central and Eastern Europe would have helped the
reader envision the regions and distances Luka travels. Even
though this is a work of fiction, it is based on and inspired by the real
experiences of Dr. Peter J. Potichnyj, a retired professor of political science. History is not just what is in a
textbook. History is the accumulation of
the lives of individual people living
through a particular time.
There is an Author's Note at the back which provides
short information on several key historical events such as the Bykivnia
massacre (an event, of so many in Ukraine, about which even most Ukrainians do
not know).
I found it difficult to read this book, and the other two
in this series, but not because of the writing, which is excellent. I wanted to keep reading each of the books,
but could only do so in short segments. The writer recreates the atmosphere and the
situations of war so realistically that my heart and nerves could not take much at
once. All I could envision was the
experience of my parents, young adults at the time, as forced labourers in
Germany during the war. Possibly someone
with no connection to the war would find it less stressful to read.
Most of the children’s and young people’s books about
World War II in Europe published so far have been about experiences of The
Holocaust. The Diary of Anne Frank is well-known, and is on most reading lists
and in curricula. The three companion
books on World War II by Marsha Skrypuch should be required reading in schools
along with Frank’s Diary.
Even though this is classified as "juvenile fiction", I
recommend that adults read all three companion books. Underground Soldier is the final book in
the author's trilogy on young Ukrainians in World War II. The first two are Stolen Child and
Making Bombs for Hitler. These do
not necessarily have to be read in the order published, but the lives of the characters in the three books are intertwined. Skrypuch has written 19 books, many
award-winning, on topics that other authors have not approached. Not only is she a fine writer, Skrypuch is a
determined and dogged champion for the underdog and the topics avoided by the
mainstream.
Regrettably, while the author’s other books are available
in the USA, this and the companion books are not.
Skrypuch’s deeply moving books in this series take us
into the horrible world of war and its effect on ordinary people. Regrettably, with the Russian invasion of
Ukraine right now, there is no end to the eternal Ukrainian struggle for independence
and peace -- and how this affects the nation and individuals.
UNDERGROUND SOLDIER by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch. Toronto:
Scholastic Canada, 2014. ISBN 978-1-4431-2437-9 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-4431-2898-8 (html)
For more about Marsha Skrypuch:
Dr. Peter J. Potichnyj’s life is covered in My
Journey, parts 1 – 2, published in book 4 of Litopys UPA [Chronicle of the UPA].
Series “Events and People”, 2008.
