Sasha Colby

Sasha Colby’s grandmother Irina insisted on making meat on a stick and vareniki for the family gathering even if her daughter planned to make lasagna. At these gatherings at Irina’s home in Niagara Falls, Canada, Colby probed her grandmother to tell her story, dragging it out in bits and pieces. Sasha then scanned the internet to learn more, giving her new questions to ask.

Irina was a young teacher when the Nazis rounded up Ukrainians for their work camps in Germany, slave labor to replace the men and boys fighting. Categorized as subhumans, they lived in horrific conditions. Irina was sent to work packing lenses in the Leica factory. She taught herself German. One day, the factory owner’s daughter toured the factory. Noticing that Irina spoke German, she brought her into her home as a servant.
Irina suddenly had a private room, warm clothes, nourishing food.

Elsie Kuhn-Leitz was wealthy and priviledged. Her father was forced to cooperate with the Nazis, providing them important lenses and accepting forced laborers under Gestapo guard. But they were appalled by the inhumanity of the Nazis towards ‘subhumans.’ Elsie did what she could to improve the workers’ lives. But even her Nazi husband could not protect her. Elsie was arrested for excessive humanity

I was drawn to read this book because as a young woman I had a neighbor who was Ukrainian and who had volunteered to replace her father as forced labor at a Nazi farm. I always wished I had asked her more about her life.

While working for Elsie, Irina met a handsome man from the forced labor camp. After the war, in a refugee camp, they pretended to be Polish knowing that the Soviets would consider them traitors and send them to Siberia. Luckily, they escaped and settled in Canada.

Colby’s memoir documents her family, her research, and her grandmother’s oral history. Irina’s heartbreaking story and Elsie’s example of moral courage are both disturbing and life affirming. It is an affecting read.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book… (mehr)

The Matryoshka Memoirs by Sasha Colby is a beautiful and horrible look at one aspect of the Nazi use and abuse of undesirables and those they felt could be exploited.

There are so many stories that have never been told and will never be told, lost to both the horrors of the time and the passing of many who survived. While there are certainly some common elements to these stories, they are all also very different and unique. The well-researched creative nonfiction work, such as this one, has given many of these stories an avenue to be told, using a factual foundation and frame with some creative recreation of conversations and interrogations. The key is for the creative portions to be true to what the facts show. This isn't new, it is why so many quotes attributed to historical figures aren't verifiable, they were created to illustrate an environment and add to the narrative that is history. Colby offers an excellent example of just such work.

While there are many people, many women, who come and go in the periphery of this particular narrative the power comes from the specific, from the couple of women at the center of the wartime portions of the book. The weaving into that story the story of the granddaughter working to learn and document their stories gives this an even more deeply personal feel. As a book I enjoyed going back and forth.

I want to stray to what most affected me once I stopped and thought about it. This rich family life after the war, the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren is a reminder of how many family lines were terminated by the Holocaust. While there are many stories from the war that will never be told, there are even more stories that were never allowed to be, that never took a breath.

If you enjoy reading history that makes you care about the individuals involved and not only the big picture, you will find people here to love and care about. This is also a creative nonfiction book that will appeal to a lot of historical fiction readers as well.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (mehr)