Stolen Girl by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

**This review contains a spoiler at the end**

Ever since the war had ended, Ukrainian born Nadia Kravchuck and her adoptive mother Marusia have been living in a displaced persons camp in Europe. But now it's 1950 and 12-year-old Nadia has just arrived in Canada with her mother Marusia to join her  adoptive father Ivan, already living in Brantford, Ontario. On her first night in her new home, several people come to visit and Nadia is introduced to Mychailo, a fellow Ukrainian immigrant with whom she will be attending school and receiving English lessons at a neighbor's house.

Unfortunately, Nadia is also plagued with nightmares and flashbacks, none of which make sense to her at first, although she feels that they have something to do with her past, a past she doesn't remember. She knows that although Ivan and Marusia aren't her real parents that they love her as if she were their own child. But who is she really? When Mychailo tells her that she doesn't sound Ukrainian and that she looks like a Nazi to him, Nadia worries that maybe that's who she really is. But Mychailo also seems like her, taking her to the library,  and reminding her to call Ivan and Marusia mother and father, or the Canadian authorities will take her away. 

Disturbed by that she might indeed be a Nazi, the nightmares and flashbacks increase, often triggered by what seem to be totally unrelated things, and finally Nadia remembers that her name used to be Gretchen Himmel and that she was a member of a Nazi family.

Later, on the first day of school, Marusia presents Nadia with a new ethnic-looking outfit that she had handmade her, despite working long, hard hours on her farm job. At school, the teacher is kind, but when a boy says she looks like a Nazi, she runs away in humiliation. Luckily, another new girl named Linda sits next to Nadia in class and the two become best friends.

Nadia eventually begins to adjust to her new life, but continues to be plagued by flashbacks to her past, causing her a great deal of confusion. Little by little, however, the puzzle pieces begin to fit together and form a picture of her life as Gretchen Himmel, daughter of a high ranking Nazi official, his cold, distance wife and his other daughter Eva. But the dreams and flashbacks continue, leading Nadia to believe that Gretchen Himmel is not her real identity. And gradually, more puzzle pieces fit together, finally falling into place through the most innocuous of triggers - a piece of candy. 

Stolen Girl is one of the most emotionally draining books I've read, and knowing before hand who Nadia really is didn't lessen the tension one bit. The novel centers around Nadia's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD and the way it manifests in her after her traumatic wartime experiences. It has to one of the hardest conditions to successfully write about in a young person for young readers to really understand, but Skrypuch has managed to do just that in the ways Nadia's past reveals itself to her through her dreams and flashbacks.

                                                               **Spoiler Alert**
Stolen Girl is also one of the most compelling books I've read about the Lebornsborn Program. With her blond hair, blue eyes and young age, Nadia was a perfect Aryan-looking fit for this Nazi program designed to strengthen the Hitler's master race. Children like her were kidnapped, sent to Germany to be Germanized and than adopted by a Nazi family. Interestingly, other children who did not fit the Aryan picture were sent to labor camps, and Skrypuch gives hints about who Nadia/Gretchen really is when she sees a girl in an German labor camp of Ostarbeiters (workers from Eastern Europe) who looks just like her, and is in return noticed by the same girl. 

If you read Making Bombs for Hitler, you already know some of Nadia"s story and why she was recognized by the young Ostarbeiter. You may recall from that book that in 1943, after the Nazis shot their mother and the Jews she had been hiding, Lida, 8, and her younger sister Larissa, 5, were kidnapped from their grandmother's home in the Ukraine and sent by cattle car to Germany, along with all the other Ukrainian children the Nazis took. Days later, arriving at a slave labor camp in Germany, Lida and Larissa were forcibly separated from one another, and from that point the story follows only Lida's life in the labor camp. If you haven't already read Making Bombs for Hitler, and the other companion book, The War Below), I highly recommend it. Stolen Girl, the companion to Lida's story, is the story of what happened to Larissa after being taken from her sister. 

Stolen Girl is gripping novel that demonstrates how the trauma of war lives on long after the war has ended. It's a suspenseful, visceral journey that proves once again Skrypuch's talent for bringing difficult stories to life. 

This book is recommended readers age 9+
This book was purchased for my personal library

Be sure to check out the other Marvelous Middle Grade Monday offerings, now being carried on by Greg at Always in the Middle.

The Baker’s Daughter by Sarah McCoy

There seems to be a lot of anticipation about to soon to be released novelThe Baker’s Daughter and I can understand why.  Split between past and present, Nazi Germany in the last year of World War II and present day El Paso, Texas, it is the story of two very different women and how they each find themselves.

Elsie Schmidt,16, is the second daughter of bakers in Garmisch, Germany.  Her older sister, Hazel, has been in the Lebensborn Program to produce strong, racially pure babies for the Fatherland since her fiancee was killed.  Their young son Julius is also there being educated in Nazi dogma.

The Schmidt’s have always been supporters of Hitler and his policies, and when Lieutenant Colonel Josef Hub, a family friend since Peter’s death, invites Elsie to the Nazis Weihnachten (Christmas) party, they are thrilled.  At the party, Joseph asks Elsie to marry him, giving her a ring that has a Hebrew in it.  Elsie doesn’t know what to do - on the one hand, he provides the bakery with supplies and the family with protection, on the other hand, he is much older and she doesn’t want to marry him.  

At the same party, a young Jewish boy with a breath-takingly beautiful voice is brought in to entertain. Elsie later learns he will be killed as soon as he is taken back to the concentration camp he was in. When a General Kremer attacks Else is an alley she escaped to for some air, it is the boys voice that save her.  Later that night, when the boy shows up at the back door of the bakery, their lives are changed forever.

Years later, in 2007,Reba Adams, a journalist, is trying to get in touch with the now elderly Elsie Schmidt to do an article on Christmas traditions around the world.  She wants to talk to Elsie about German traditions.  But her interviews turn out the be very different from what Reba had expected.  And again lives are changed.

The Baker’s Daughter is about the journey two women must make in order to find their true selves.  And even though the time and facts of their individual journeys are different, the outcomes are very much the same.  

There is a very diverse cast of characters in this novel, some nice, some not, but all very relevant in the lives of Elsie and Reba.  I felt more connected to Elsie’s story and found it much more compelling than Reba’s story.  I believe that is because we are give more details about her life and follow it from 1944 to the present, whereas we learn about Reba’s past mainly from her thoughts and they are not as thoroughly explored.  I also found myself more drawn to Elsie than I did to Reba and maybe that is why.  

Don’t get me wrong, however.  I really enjoyed reading The Baker’s Daughter, and found it hard to put down.  I found it to be a well researched story and it does bring out a disturbing  aspect of the Lebensborn Program that many people may not know about.   

A bonus: at the end of the novel, there is a collection of recipes to bake that are mentioned throughout the story, some from Elsie’s families bakery in Germany, so new ones from life in El Paso, and all, I am sure, scrumptious.

This book is recommended for readers age 15 and up.

This book was received as an E-ARC from Netgalley.com

You can find a reading group guide for The Baker’s Daughter at Sarah McCoy

The Baker’s Daughter

Sarah McCoy

Crown

January 24, 2012

304 Pages

Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf

Joan Wolf has written novel based on truth. The first part of Someone Named Eva is based on the famous massacre of the residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia. The second part is based on a little known practice of the Nazis in which children who looked Aryan were forcibly taken from their families, placed in a Kinderheim (children’s home) and Germanized. After their Germanization was completed, they were adopted by German families.

The novel begins in the middle of the night on June 10, 1942, a few weeks after Milada Kralicek’s 11th birthday. There is a knock on the Kralicek’s front door and armed Nazis order the family to pack a few things and go with them. In the yard, Milada, her mother, grandmother and baby sister are separated from her father and older brother. Before they leave the yard, Milada’s grandmother surreptitiously gives her a star shaped garnet pin and tells her she must always keep it to remember who she is. The stars had always held special meaning for them; growing up, her grandmother had taught Milada all about the constellations and how the North Star can always help you find you way home.

On the road, they are joined by the other women and children of Lidice. These are all people who had believed that they were safe from the Nazis because they were not Jewish, but Hitler was enraged about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich* in Prague by two Czechs. He gave an order that all adult men over 16 were to be executed, all women were to be sent to a work camp, the village of Lidice was to be burned to the ground and all children suitable for Germanization were to be removed. Wolf does not go into all the grime details of this terrible event, but the reader does slowly learn something about it as the story goes along.

From Lidice, the women and children are driven to Kladmo, where they are held in a large gymnasium. The floor is covered with hay and each family quickly claims a space for themselves on the floor. On the second day, two men go through the gym, looking over the children and picking a few to go with them, including Milada. These children have one thing in common - blond hair and blue eyes. They are lined up and examined, including measurements of their noses and heads. Even the color of their eyes is compared to an eye color chart. Late on the third day, Milada is taken away from her mother, who is later sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. Milada and one other girl are put on a bus by themselves. In reality, it is estimated that around 100,000 children were stolen from their families for Germanization just as Milada is.

The girls are taken to Puschkau, Poland, a village surrounded by barbed wire. It is filled with Nazi women and girls who look just like Milada – blond hair, blue eyes. She is at a Lebensborn center, where she is about to be Germanized. Here, Milada ceases to exist as she is turned into Eva, an Aryan girl.

Milada/Eva spends two years at the center in Puschkau being Germanized, better known as brainwashing – learning how to speak German and how to be a proper Nazi wife and mother. There are no shortages here, none of the hunger she had felt at home, and there are always new warm clothes and shoes whenever they are needed. Though she tries hard to hang on to her original identity, Milada begins to slip away and Eva takes over.

After two years, Eva is adopted by a German family, and her new father is the commandant of Ravensbrück. At first, life is good there, with the exception of the terrible smell that permeates the air, and she begins to forget her past life in Czechoslovakia. One day, she wraps her grandmother’s star shaped pin in a handkerchief, puts it away in a draw and forgets about it. Then one scary day, Eva realizes she can no longer remember what her real name was. But by now, it is 1945 and Germany’s fortunes have started their downward turn. Eva is about to experience yet another major upheaval in her young life.

Someone named Eva is narrated in the first person by Milada, enabling Wolf to take two otherwise complicated and horrific subjects and present them in a very simple straightforward way, ideal for younger readers. There is also a long Author’s Note at the end of the book explaining the events that took place in Lidice and afterwards. Lebensborn centers were not originally intended for Germanization and indoctrination, but for reproducing racially correct babies. Nevertheless, during the war they took on this second task. I highly recommend Someone named Eva.

Someone named Eva has won a number of well deserved awards:
2007 Junior Library Guild Spring Selection
2007 VOYA Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers
2008 CCBC Choices
2008 Society of Midland Authors Children’s Fiction Finalist
And to date, this novel is on 11 Children’s Choice Lists

More information about Someone named Eva may be found on Joan M. Wolf ‘s website at Joan M. Wolf 
Joan M. Wolf, who wrote Someone named Eva, is not to be confused with Joan Wolf, author of Christian fiction. They are two different people.

This book is recommended for readers aged 9-12.
This book was borrowed from the Yorkville Branch of the New York Public Library.

*Reinhard Heydrich, nicknamed “the Hangman” was a particularly hateful, cruel man and one of the architects of the Final Solution. He was named Reich Protector of Bohemia-Moravia in 1941. His job in Czechoslovakia was to organize and coordinate the deportation of Jews and other enemies of the state to death camps.