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Halifax Public Libraries
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Colby, Sasha, 1978-
Subjects
Nikifortchuk, Irina.
Kühn-Leitz, Elsie, 1903-1985.
Holocaust survivors -- Ukraine -- Biography.
Ukrainians -- Germany -- Biography.
Forced labor -- Germany -- Biography.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Conscript labor -- Germany.
Foreign workers, Ukrainian -- Germany -- Biography.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Women -- Germany -- Biography.
Ukrainians -- Germany -- Biography.
Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust.
Browse Catalog
by author:
Colby, Sasha, 1978-
by title:
The matryoshka memoi...
by call number:
940.5318 C686m
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Colby, Sasha, 1978-
Nikifortchuk, Irina.
Kühn-Leitz, Elsie, 1903-1985.
Holocaust survivors -- Ukraine -- Biography.
Ukrainians -- Germany -- Biography.
Forced labor -- Germany -- Biography.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Conscript labor -- Germany.
Foreign workers, Ukrainian -- Germany -- Biography.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Women -- Germany -- Biography.
Ukrainians -- Germany -- Biography.
Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust.
MARC Display
The
matryoshka
memoirs
: a
story
of
Ukrainian
forced
labour
, the
Leica
camera
factory
, and
Nazi
resistance
/ Sasha Colby.
by
Colby, Sasha, 1978-
ECW Press, 2023.
Call #:
940.5318 C686m
Subjects
Nikifortchuk, Irina.
Kühn-Leitz, Elsie, 1903-1985.
Holocaust survivors -- Ukraine -- Biography.
Ukrainians -- Germany -- Biography.
Forced
labor -- Germany -- Biography.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Conscript labor -- Germany.
Foreign workers,
Ukrainian
-- Germany -- Biography.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Women -- Germany -- Biography.
Ukrainians -- Germany -- Biography.
Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust.
ISBN:
9781770417359 (pbk.)
Description:
246 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Summary:
"A granddaughter explores the
story
of her
Ukrainian
grandmother's survival of Hitler's
forced
labor camps. Irina Nikifortchuk was 19 years old and a
Ukrainian
schoolteacher when she was abducted to be a
forced
laborer in the
Leica
camera
factory
in
Nazi
Germany. Eventually pulled from the camp hospital to work as a domestic in the
Leica
owners' household, Irina survived the war and eventually found her way to Canada. Decades later Sasha Colby, Irina's granddaughter, seeks out her grandmother's
story
over a series of summer visits and gradually begins to interweave the as-told-to
story
with historical research. As she delves deeper into the history of the
Leica
factory
and World War II
forced
labor, she discovers the parallel
story
of Elsie Kühn-Leitz, Irina's rescuer and the
factory
heiress, later imprisoned and interrogated by the Gestapo on charges of "excessive humanity." This is creative nonfiction at its best as the mystery of Irina's life unspools skillfully and arrestingly. Despite the horrors that the
story
must tell, it is full of life, humor, food, and the joy of ordinary safety in Canada. The
Matryoshka
Memoirs
takes us into a forgotten corner of history, weaving a rich and satisfying tapestry of survival and family ties and asking what we owe those who aid us."--From publisher.
"Historian Colby (Stratified Modernism) offers an inventive account of her grandmother’s harrowing survival in a
Nazi
forced
labor camp. In 1942, 19-year-old Irina was taken from her family in Ukraine by
Nazi
soldiers, brought to Germany, and
forced
to work at the
Leica
camera
factory
in Wetzlar.
Leica
cameras, Colby explains, were used by Hitler’s personal photographer as well as
Nazi
propagandists documenting the “depraved conditions” of the Warsaw ghetto. The
factory
also produced optical equipment for the military, including bombsights for planes. But the factory’s owner, Ernst Leitz II, and his daughter Elsie Kühn-Leitz clandestinely helped many Jewish employees leave the country. Kühn-Leitz also often took young women, including Irina, out of the camp by hiring them to work as maids at the family estate. Loosely interweaving the women’s stories, Colby notes that Kühn-Leitz was arrested and spent three months in a Gestapo prison, while Irina and her husband (she fell in love with and married a fellow
Ukrainian
at the camp) were briefly held prisoner by the invading Russian army and escaped with the help of a British soldier. Throughout, Colby lays bare her own struggle as a writer in present-day Canada grappling with a distant past, describing how her frail but feisty grandmother is more focused on watching soap operas and preparing
Ukrainian
delicacies for a family reunion than sharing her
story
. As a result, Colby must scour the internet, quiz her mother, and use her imagination to “piece together a puzzle of second-hand memories.” In so doing, she breathes new life into well-trodden WWII tropes, building a vivid, novelistic narrative focused on memory and family. Readers of WWII fiction will savor this evocative work of history."--Publishers Weekly.
Holds:
0
Copy/Holding information
Location
Collection
Call No.
Item type
Status
Due Date
Woodlawn Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
940.5318 C686m
Adult books
Checked in
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Central Library
Adult Nonfiction
940.5318 C686m
Adult books
Checked out
Jul 23, 2024
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