I first heard about the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) almost two decades ago. Could it really be true that there was an underground army that fought the two most bloodthirsty dictatorships of the twentieth century? People who couldn’t take the tyranny anymore, so they went into the woods and the mountains, built hiding places and underground hospitals and fought back for freedom, even though they’d likely die in the process?
I still hardly believed it — until 1999, when I met Peter J. Potichnyj, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at McMaster University. He had joined the UPA when he was fourteen. Not only has he written his own story, but he has been collecting primary documents about the UPA for decades and is the editor-in-chief of Litopys UPA, a set of documents and memoirs about the UPA which comprises 115 volumes, mostly in Ukrainian.
Without Peter’s guidance, I would not have been able to write this book.
The battles and incidents that Luka and Martina are involved in during the time of this story are based on actual events. Luka and Martina are fictional characters inspired by real people, and the villages are fictionalized, but based on real ones.
* * *
The framework of Luka’s story relies on some key historical events:
Babyn Yar is a ravine located in Kyiv, beside a Jewish cemetery. Over the course of two days, September 29 to 30, 1941, the Nazis killed 33,771 Jews at this site. This was one of the largest single massacres in World War II. By the end of the war, Babyn Yar would claim more than 100,000 other Nazi victims, including Roma, Ukrainians and Soviet prisoners of war.
Bykivnia was a village in the woods on the northeastern fringe of Kyiv. Between 1936 and 1941, the Soviets used the area as a massive yet secret burial ground. More than 100,000 Ukrainians and others who had been tortured and killed by the NKVD are buried there.
Forced repatriation occurred after the war when Stalin demanded that Soviet citizens who had, in Stalin’s eyes, “allowed themselves” to be captured by the Nazis be returned to the Soviet Union. Those who did return were either killed outright or sent to brutal work camps in Siberia, because Stalin considered anyone who was captured by the Nazis to be a traitor. Those who managed to escape to the West hid their wartime experiences because they feared being sent back to the Soviet Union. Their stories only began to emerge after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Ostarbeiter (Eastern Worker) was the name the Nazis gave to the millions of young people, many from what is now Eastern Ukraine, who were forced into labour. They were required to wear a badge stitched with the letters OST. Most lived behind barbed wire in guarded camps. The 3 to 5.5 million Ostarbeiters in Nazi Germany were treated harshly — often worked to death. Many were forced to work in German munitions factories because the Nazis realized that those were prime targets for bombing by the Allied nations and did not want to risk their own citizens.
NKVD was a brutal organization, the secret police, whose task was to inflict terror on perceived enemies of the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union from about 1924 until his death in 1953. During the winter of 1933–34, he withdrew food from Eastern Ukraine and sealed the borders so that the populace starved to death by the millions. This act of genocide is now known as the Holodomor — literally death by hunger.
Koreans, Poles, Germans, Chechens, Tatars and other ethnic groups were deported from their homelands to prison camps in Siberia, Central Asia and other harsh, remote regions, where large numbers of them died. Stalin ordered so-called “socially harmful people” such as the homeless, the unemployed and former aristocracy to be shot.
It is impossible to know how many people were killed as a result of Stalinism. Estimates range from 15 to 20 million or more.
For the first two years of World War II, Stalin fought on the same side as Hitler, against the Allies. After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Allies accepted Stalin on their side.
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska povstanska armiia or UPA) was a well-organized military network of guerrilla fighters — men and women whose goal was independence for Ukraine. The UPA fought both the Nazis and the Soviets and operated throughout Ukraine, but were mostly concentrated in Volyn, the Carpathian Mountains and forests of western Ukraine. The UPA was formed in response to the brutality of both regimes and drew its members from many nationalities and all parts of the populace, although most of its members were Ukrainian. At its height, the army numbered between 45,000 and 60,000 fighters.
Also Available
Read the companion books to Underground Soldier:
Lida and her younger sister are caught by the Nazis and separated. Lida is sent to a slave labour camp, where she works from dawn to dusk on only bread and soup, clad in one thin dress and no shoes. Even if she manages to survive the war, how will she find her sister again?
“A sensitively written page turner that teaches lessons in courage, faith, ingenuity and hard work … It is an important story.”
—The Montreal Gazette
“[A]nother compelling tale based on the slave raids Hitler conducted throughout the Soviet Union.”
—Calgary Herald
“The story is gripping and the themes powerful … an important piece of historical fiction.”
—Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction, jury citation
* Silver Birch Award Winner
* Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction Finalist
* An Ontario Library Association Best Bet
* Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award Finalist
* Resource Links, Best of the Year
* Best Books for Kids & Teens, Starred Selection
Nadia arrives in Canada after the end of World War II, from the Displaced Persons’ camp where she has spent the last five years. But troubling memories and dreams begin to haunt her. Who is she really? She sees images of another family, Nazi uniforms, Hitler … but can she believe what her dreams are telling her?
“[Skrypuch] takes on the Nazis’ notorious obsession with racial purity in her new novel … [She] succeeds in making some of the more horrific and lesser-known events of the Second World War accessible and engaging for younger readers.”
—Quill & Quire
“Through gripping prose … Skrypuch relates a story previously untold in children’s fiction, offering an original perspective on the Ukrainian experience during the Second World War.”
—Saskatoon StarPhoenix
* Crystal Kite Award Winner
* CLA Book of the Year for Children Finalist
* An Ontario Library Association Best Bet
* Best Books for Kids & Teens, Starred Selection
* Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award Honour Book
* Resource Links, Best of the Year
* Diamond Willow Award Finalist
* Golden Oak Award Nominee
* IODE Violet Downey Recommended List
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Skrypuch, Marsha Forchuk, 1954-, author
Underground soldier / Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4431-2437-9 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4431-2898-8 (html)
1. World War, 1939-1945--Ukraine--Juvenile fiction. 2. World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements--Ukraine--Juvenile fiction.
I. Title.
PS8587.K79U64 2014 jC813’.54 C2013-905336-0
C2013-905
337-9
Cover images: Face © Sebastian Knight/Shutterstock; map with compass rose © Molodec/Shutterstock; hammer and sickle © Simonalvinge/Shutterstock.
Copyright © 2014 by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch.
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First eBook edition: January 2014
Underground Soldier Page 16
