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Item Information   Copy / Holding Information     Publisher Weekly Review     More Content       More by this author     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     Search the Web     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   Add Copy to MyList Central Library Adult Nonfiction 940.5318 C686m Adult books Checked out Jul 23, 2024 Add Copy to MyList

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