Lost History of Ukraine: the Holocaust, Holodomor, and Chernobyl

In our study of Ukraine, I came across these three phenomenal books. The top two are historical fiction and the third is a biography. Don’t be deterred by the reading age, these books are just fine for teens and adults. Each of them reveals the truth about an otherwise little known or lost history of Ukraine. Click here for the full cultural unit study: Discover Ukraine, A Book A Day.

The Holodomor

The Lost Year is told from the perspectives of three people: two girls in 1932 to 1933 during the Ukranian Holodomor (“death by famine”) and one boy in 2020 during the pandemic. We are currently in the middle of this as a read-aloud and my children will not let me stop at one chapter per night.

Matthew

The book begins with Matthew’s story in 2020 who lives with his mother in New Jersey. His great-grandmother, Nadiya, has come to live with them. A beautiful relationship forms between the two generations. Matthew’s parents are divorced and he worries about his father’s health as he covers the Covid news in France at the beginning of the pandemic. Some people may say that they don’t wish to be reminded of quarantining and feeling sad and afraid at the beginning of the pandemic. Even with the insulation of homeschooling, I think it has helped our family to talk this over together.

Mila

In the 1932 to 1933 storyline, we learn about the Holodomor, a famine created by the Soviet government in which millions of Ukrainian people died. Following Mila’s storyline, we see conflicting world views in the characters of Mila and Nadiya. Mila’s father works for the Soviet government and she has been taught that Papa Stalin takes care of everyone. When Nadiya, a starving peasant, comes into her life, her beliefs are turned upside down as the truth is revealed.

Helen

The third point of view is of Helen in 1932 to 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. As the child of Ukrainian immigrants, she struggles to fit in at school. When a newspaper article declares there is no famine in Ukraine, her attention shifts to collecting people’s stories. Her aim is to reveal the truth and to help her cousin in Ukraine. We talked at length about bias and integrity in journalism.

As the relationship between Matthew and Nadiya grows, he feels the urge to preserve her story and memories so that they will not be lost to history. In the same way, this book preserves and educates us about this little known time in Ukraine.

Chernobyl

I found a few books about Chernobyl but none of them makes it come as alive as The Blackbird Girls. Two classmates, Valentine and Oksana, are evacuated from Chernobyl at the time of the nuclear explosion in 1986. Valentina is Jewish and Oksana has been taught to hate Jews, but slowly they build trust and a close friendship. This story is told from the points of view of Valentina, Oksana, and a third girl, Rifka, from 1941. We learned so much about the nuclear meltdown, the cover-up, the effects it had on people, and the dangerous environment of Soviet Russia. (Trigger warning: there are situations of child abuse mentioned.)

Holocaust in Ukraine

This amazing survival story of Greg Dawson’s mother is written in plain verse but Susan Hood uses the words in such a visual way that, if I were reading it aloud, I would invite a child to look over my shoulder. It is the difficult and very moving true story of how Ukrainian Jewish piano prodigies Zhanna and Frina manage to survive the Holocaust in Ukraine. At first, they believe that all is well with the signing of a peace agreement between Russia and Germany. The invasion of Germany comes at a great surprise and many Jewish people are immediately killed. Zhanna and Frina’s musical talent, mixed with an incredible amount of luck, helps them to survive.

The photographs of the characters and the story of how this book came about are so important for understanding the value of passing history down. Up until recently, Zhanna had been reticent with her past and only opened up to her granddaughter. Dawson writes at the end of how this book sheds light “on a lost chapter of the Holocaust, the dawn hours in Ukraine.”

Miraculously, Zhanna escaped with the sheet music of Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu and it survived the entire journey. The telling of the story also reunited Zhanna with people from her past in Ukraine. Also included in the end notes are further websites for education, recommended places to visit, and extensive poetry notes about various poetic techniques used throughout.