As I swept the ribbons of bedding and tufts of feathers into one corner, I spied a bent piece of paper and picked it up. It was the photograph that Mrs. Segal had taken of me and Mama and Maria on the day the Nazis arrived in Viteretz. We had all been so hopeful then, thinking the war was over, thinking we would have our own country. How could we ever have guessed, back then, just how evil the Nazis truly were?
The photograph was partly ripped, and a giant boot print obscured Mama’s face. I brushed off the dirt as best I could and held the photograph to my heart. “Dear Mama, dear Maria, please stay safe.”
I also found Mama and Tato’s wedding photo, still in its frame, but with the glass smashed. A young and hopeful Mama and Tato stared out at me, their eyes filled with anticipation. I felt as if I had let them both down. “I’m sorry, Tato,” I said, tracing the outline of his face with the tip of my finger. “I tried to be brave, to do what was right, but it wasn’t enough.”
I gathered all the ripped pieces of the hand-drawn portraits of Dolik’s family that I could find, but I didn’t have the heart to put them together. The tattered fragments of their faces were a vivid reminder of my failure to keep them safe.
The bed frames were still both flipped onto their sides and leaning against the wall, but when I set them down on the floor, I remembered that the mattresses were now nothing but a pile of feathers. I took my two photographs and the ripped portraits with me and walked back to the kitchen. I knelt on the floor beside the hole where my friends had lived for so many months. The policeman had even destroyed the blanket and pillows that Dolik and Leon and Mr. Segal had slept on. All that was left was straw on clay.
I climbed into the hole, still clasping the photos and drawings. I curled into a ball and wept. Somehow, I slept.
I awoke the next morning with chattering teeth, clutching the pictures. I put them in my pocket so they wouldn’t get lost. My mind tumbled with all the things that had happened the day before. I had to get back to the jail to see if they would release Mama.
Blood was spattered all over my clothing and feet. I’d have to clean myself before I went back to the jail if I wanted to make a good impression. When the police had ransacked our house, they’d kicked the water pail over and badly dented it, but it was still able to hold water, so I grabbed it and walked to the pump.
The street was crowded and it seemed that everyone was flowing toward the town square. The thought of why they were going there turned my stomach. Would Dolik and Mr. Segal and Leon be loaded onto the train to Belzec with the last of the Jews from our town? I had witnessed the other Aktions only so I could find out if Doctor Mina had been selected. This was an Aktion that I could not witness. I wanted to remember Dolik the way I had last seen him, standing with his brother and Mr. Segal, reaching up his hand and catching the kiss that I blew to him. And smiling.
At the water pump I saw Marga, her face swollen and bruised and her eyes rimmed with red. I had a moment of pity for her, but then saw what she was wearing—a dress that used to belong to a Jewish girl in my class. “You!” I said. “Why did you tell the Commandant that we were hiding Jews?”
“Don’t hate me,” she said, tears running down her mottled face. “You were pumping much more water. They beat me and still I didn’t tell them. But then they were going to kill Mutter if I didn’t say something …”
Her answer took the wind out of my fury. She was weak and probably a gossip—which might have been how the rumor of our hiding Jews got started—but she probably loved her mother as much as I loved mine. What would I have done to save my own mother from death?
I said nothing more to Marga, just filled the pail with water and hurried back home, ignoring all the people going in the opposite direction. I cleaned myself as best I could, but there was no soap in the house and no other clothing for me to wear. The cool water felt good on my face, but I was shocked by how much blood came off on my hands.
I hadn’t eaten anything since the day before, but I was too upset to be hungry, and just as well, because there was no food. I got back out onto the street and, numb, followed the flow of the people. The train platform and the jail were both in the town square. All things led to the town square.
As I got closer, I noticed an eerie silence. There was no rumbling of a train idling on the track. If there was no train, the Aktion couldn’t be in progress. A small relief—Dolik’s life would be slightly extended.
But people were heading to the town square for some reason, and as I got closer I could hear a hum of low voices. The square came into view. A wooden frame had been erected in its center. At first I thought there was a length of cloth hanging from it.
But the cloth twisted slowly in the breeze, and as it turned, I saw my mother’s face.
The Commandant had hanged Mama.
I ran to Mama’s body and wrapped my arms around her legs. They were cold and stiff, but I could not believe that she was dead. “Mama … Mama!”
Hands grabbed at me. “Get down from there, girl,” snapped Officer Weber. “Your mother is dead.”
He wrapped one arm around my waist and tried to yank me away. I punched and bit and screamed.
Everything went black.
I woke with a jolt and looked around, not understanding where I was. Anya hovered over me, her brow wrinkled.
I tried to sit up, but the room swirled, so I lay back down. “Mama!” I cried. “I have to help her.”
“Krystia,” said Anya. “Your mother is dead. She was hanged for sheltering Jews.”
“No …” I wailed. “Please tell me it isn’t true.” I wrapped my arms around Anya and wept. My entire world had shattered. Tato dead, Mama dead, Maria gone. What did I have to live for anymore? My world was entirely black.
Anya held on to me and stroked my back as I wept.
“Krystia, I’m sorry to tell you, but the Commandant has also confiscated your house and belongings.” She looked into my face. “But you can live here with Father Andrij and me, as long as you wish.”
Her offer was kind, but I could not stay.
Losing the house seemed so trivial compared to the murder of my mother. I ran my hand over my skirt pocket. The pictures were still there. The Commandant could kill Mama, but he couldn’t take away my memory. In my heart, Mama still lived.
“Krystia,” Anya murmured, “your mother was a strong and brave soul. Always putting others’ needs before her own. She was so proud of you. She said you were the bravest girl in the world.”
Those were the very words Mama had last said to me. Mama had died trying to save our friends, but where were they now? As far as I knew, they were still alive, yet here I was, thinking only of myself and my own sorrow. I couldn’t save Mama, but could I still do something to help Dolik and Mr. Segal and Leon?
“Have the Jews been sent to Belzec?” I asked.
She shook her head. “The Commandant has taken these last ones himself. They’ve been marched to the Jewish graveyard.”
I stumbled to my feet, nearly fainting as I did so. “I have to go.”
“You need to rest,” said Anya. “You’ve had a shock.”
“Mama wouldn’t want me to rest!” I ran out the door.
My mind was in a jumble and I wasn’t thinking straight, but somehow I thought that if I got to the graveyard, I could convince the Commandant not to go ahead with his plan. He had killed my mother. He had sent all the other Jews to Belzec, or had them shot here. Wasn’t that enough for him? The killing had to stop. For the sake of his own soul, he could not kill Dolik, Leon, or Mr. Segal. He. Could. Not.
But when I got to the graveyard, the fresh earth bulged and quivered with the corpses of the last Jews of Viteretz. All that remained was a pitiful mound of their clothing.
Commandant Hermann sat motionless on a wooden box, a Luger in hand, splattered head to toe with blood. He looked up and saw me standing there. “You want to be next, girl?”
I turned away. I walked down the road and out of town. I walked beyond my
own pasture. I kept walking until I got to Auntie Iryna’s pasture—and of course it wasn’t hers anymore either. But I stepped through the brush and hid in the brambles behind the rock where Dolik had found Uncle Roman’s body.
It seemed a lifetime ago, so much had happened in these past two years. I curled into a ball and held my knees to my chest, ignoring the thorns and burrs. I could feel the spirit of Uncle Roman wrapping me in his arms. In the depths of my heart, I heard his voice: “You are a strong girl, my dear niece. You will get through this.”
I closed my eyes and waited for darkness. Could I survive? It would take more luck than strength. In the early hours of the morning, I unfolded my stiff, cold legs and found my way to the insurgents’ hideout in the forest.
I reached the perimeter of the camp before the first light of dawn. It was quiet and still, but I knew I was being watched. I didn’t dare step any closer for fear of being mistaken as the enemy and shot. I gulped in a lungful of air, then carefully, clearly, did my best imitation of the falcon’s kak kak kak.
Then I slumped beside a birch tree and waited. Maybe I slept. When I opened my eyes, there was a boy who couldn’t have been more than fourteen crouched in front of me, scrutinizing my face. A rifle was slung across his back. It was not aimed at me and I took comfort in that.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Krystia Fediuk, Ivan Pidhirney’s niece. Iryna Fediuk’s niece.”
“Why are you here?”
“My mother has just been killed. I need to see my aunt and uncle.”
“What is the answer to the question?”
“Ukraine is not yet dead.”
The boy nodded. “Follow me.” He signaled to people I couldn’t see to hold their fire. As morning light broke through, he walked me past the snipers poised in trees and hiding behind bushes. We walked into the encampment.
Uncle Ivan wept when I told him that I was the only one left of all our family and friends. “The Commandant will pay for this!” he said. “I don’t know when or how, but I will make it happen.”
I couldn’t live with Uncle Ivan, because he stayed in the underground barracks with all the men, but Auntie Iryna’s living space was a room carved under the side of a hill. “You’ll stay with me,” she said.
When my eyes adjusted to the dim shadows of her cave room I saw a mound of stolen army uniforms—many ripped, some of them stained. “Those ones need fixing,” she said. “That’s one of the things I’m good at.”
She found an extra bedroll for me, and while the insurgents prepared for an uprising all around me, Auntie Iryna nursed me back to health one teaspoon of soup at a time. She told me that I was a survivor, as she was. And that the way to honor our family and friends was to be strong and to live and to tell their stories.
“Who will remember them if you give up?” she asked.
Auntie Iryna found the photos and the ripped-up drawings in my pocket. She made a glue of flour and water and carefully pieced the portraits back together. We hung them on the wall of our cave. I found comfort in looking at Dolik and his family. But sometimes I’d wake up weeping, wondering if the Kitais were staring down at me in judgment because I couldn’t save them. On those nights it was hard to get back to sleep.
Auntie Iryna liked to look at the wedding picture of Mama and Tato—the one that Mr. Segal had taken so many years ago—before the sadness, before the war. “Look in their eyes,” she said. “See the hope and joy for the future. They want that for you.”
When I was stronger, she showed me the photograph of Mama and me and Maria, the one that had been taken by Mrs. Segal. I held it to my heart and wept.
“You know that Maria is alive and safe,” she gently reminded me, her arm wrapped around my shoulder. “She’s probably on that farm in Austria by now, with Nathan. I think you need to find her. That’s what your mother would want.”
“Did you know that Auntie Stefa had wanted Mama and Maria and me to go to Canada and live with her?”
“Your mother told me,” Auntie Iryna replied. “She confided in me once that her biggest regret was not taking Stefa up on the offer before the war.”
“She couldn’t possibly have known how bad things would get here,” I said.
“That’s true,” said Iryna. “But I think your mother would rest easy in her grave if she knew that you and Maria were with Stefa.”
Iryna’s words gave me pause. I closed my eyes, and an image of Auntie Stefa formed in my imagination. She looked so much like Mama, but without the sadness of loss and war. Auntie Stefa was family. She already loved us. Now she would protect us.
My little sister had been so brave, escaping with Nathan to ensure he’d survive.
But now it was my time to escape, to survive—and to be with Maria again.
Together we would go to Auntie Stefa. In Canada there was food. And peace.
And freedom.
Mama would rest easy.
“I’m going to that Austrian farm to find Maria,” I told Auntie Iryna. The thought filled me with hope. “Can you teach me what you know, so I’ll have the strength and skill to get there?”
“You already have the strength, Krystia. You’ve proven that. But the skill—that I can help you learn,” said Auntie Iryna, hugging me fiercely.
DON’T TELL THE NAZIS was inspired by the true story of Kateryna Sikorska and her daughter Krystia, who hid three Jewish friends under their kitchen floor during the Holocaust.
Krystia is now a senior citizen who lives in Canada. Her daughter, journalist and filmmaker Iryna Korpan, approached me in 2012 at a public event. She handed me a copy of her excellent documentary, She Paid the Ultimate Price, and explained that it was about her own mother’s and grandmother’s heroic actions in World War II Ukraine. She asked if I would consider writing a book about it.
After reviewing the documentary and doing some preliminary research, I agreed. I had originally planned to write this book as nonfiction, but as I got into the interviews and research, I realized that writing it that way would not do the story justice. Many of the people who lived through those times have perished. How could I interview them? How could I quote them?
But the other problem was that as I delved into the complicated events of the time, I realized that the story extended far beyond Krystia and her family.
I archived my original manuscript and started from scratch. I located memoirs and narratives of other people in the surrounding towns to create fictional characters based on composites of those real people.
However, my heroine is true to the real Krystia. Her younger sister was Maria, and her father was a blacksmith who died before the war. Her Aunt Stefa sent packages of goods, like stockings, from North America for the family to sell should the need arise.
Dolik and Leon were Krystia’s next-door neighbors. Their mother was a doctor and their father ran a stationery store from the house. Photographer Michael Klar and his wife, Lida, lived across the road from Krystia. Michael Klar took the wedding photo of Krystia’s parents. He and his wife are my inspiration for Mr. and Mrs. Segal.
While pasturing his cow a few kilometers outside their town, Krystia’s uncle was shot and killed by a Soviet soldier. Her cousin was killed by the NKVD—his body so brutalized that the only way he could be identified was by his crooked baby finger.
Ukrainian insurgents did capture the radio station in Lviv and declare independence from the Soviets and the Nazis. They posted flyers to this effect all over the area. These posters were quickly taken down by the Nazis, and those leaders of the independence movement who were captured were sent to concentration camps.
Krystia really did sneak food into the ghetto and spirit out photographs. Her mother and uncle worked with Ukrainian insurgents in the area to create false documents that helped save Jews. Krystia’s mother also sneaked onto the train to sell goods in Lviv.
The first names of the three Jewish friends that Krystia’s family hid were indeed Dolik, Leon, and Michael. The real Nathan esc
aped using the false document that had been provided by Krystia’s family.
All the atrocities are based on documented Aktions in the area, orchestrated by the Nazi regime to carry out the Hunger Plan and the Holocaust.
The Commandant and his actions are inspired by a Kriminalpolizei officer named Willi Hermann who was personally involved in the liquidation of the Jews in the area.
Krystia’s mother’s fate is real, as is that of Dolik, Leon, and Michael.
But Don’t Tell the Nazis is a novel, not nonfiction. My story is framed around these people and events.
The real-life Krystia was only eight years old in 1941, though her courageous actions were that of a mature individual. Today’s readers might have difficulty understanding that someone so young could accomplish all that Krystia did. I felt that making her older would make her actions more relatable.
Maria was only seven. Dolik and Leon were older teens. For the sake of the story I made them closer in age to Krystia so they could be classmates and friends.
Krystia also had an older sister named Iryna, who was ten, but it was Krystia who took Krasa to their pasture twice a day and sneaked food and documents into the ghetto to help the Jews.
Krystia’s actual town was Pidhaytsi, which means “under the wood.” I’ve renamed it Viteretz, which means “breezy,” and I’ve made the town much smaller. I populated my novel with composite secondary characters based on my research.
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, conveys gratitude to non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust by naming them Righteous Among the Nations. Those honored with this title are listed in a database and have their names engraved in a memorial at Yad Vashem.
Those caught hiding Jews in Pidhaytsi, and in other areas of Occupied Poland that are now part of Ukraine, were treated much more harshly by the Nazis than rescuers in other parts of Europe. Ukrainians risked death not only for themselves but for their entire families. In spite of those high stakes, more than twenty-five hundred Ukrainians have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for their efforts in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust.
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