Seize A Boy In Winter Crafted By Rachel Seiffert Distributed As Interactive EBook

for this prejudiced disgrace of a book is too much,.is more appropriate, with half a star to acknowledge the author's ability to spell,
I think that when you pick a sensitive topic like the collaboration of Ukrainians with the nazi invaders, you just have to learn you "math".

When you say that Ukrainians supported fascists because they ran away from Stalin and got seduced by Hitler's promises of prosperity, oh you've got to study the crap out of archives or interviews whatever your sources are.

One might say that it's "only fiction" so Seiffert can appeal to het imagination or some crap like this.
But let's be honest how often do we check the factual material in historical novels So, it's not all innocent and does influence readers' opinions, including those on today's Ukraine.
And Seiffert's message is clear: Ukraine equals fascism, For whatever reason, Seiffet connects modern symbols of the country yellowblue flag with fascist ideology,
Perhaps it's less surprising that a propaganda text like this is listed in the NYT Best books of, a notoriously Ukrainophobic medium.
This A Boy in Winter's strongest aspect was the characters, who were wellformed and memorable, However, the writing style was too simple for my taste, It made the long descriptions of the countryside or construction dull to read about, As a result, this novel struggled to maintain its suspense because moments that should have been more harrowing were foiled by the dull writing and the oddly drawn out nature of this quite short novel.
While reading, my interest came and went, which made me fly through thirty pages and then slog through the next forty.
However, I maintained interest in the characters' story arcs, I liked the author's decision to include multiple perspectives, which added some variety to the novel, It was also nice to read a World War II story that specifically dealt with people living in Ukraine, a country often overlooked for its more prominent neighbors.


Despite the strength of the characters, this novel's short time frame and plodding pacing undermine what could have been a much more impactful novel.
There are a lot of books on the Holocaust out there, I hope it continually serves as a reminder to never forget the atrocities we are capable of committing against fellow humans.
Baffling to think of now, but one person managed to convince a whole civilisation to act the way they did.


This is a story set in a particular time period,in Ukraine, and looks at human nature and the different forms humanity can take.
Not all Jews were killed in concentration camps, and there is a part in the middle that was truly haunting, especially as the author lets us imagine for ourselves what might have happened.
Even as people grapple with their conscience, its the doingnothing that strikes me, And there are different ways of being able to justify this to ones self: alcohol, trying to remember there is an end to it, trying to remove yourself from the thick of the situation etc.
Fear makes us weak.

Reading around this period in time, I came across an article written by the author.
Her grandparents were Nazis, and she talks of what if you were born on the wrong side of history.
I can see why she has written a novel like this,

I liked this, didnt absolutely love this, but it did make me reflect a lot on what people are capable of, and what we as individuals might be capable of when push comes to shove.
Things are rarely black and white, after all, A solidstars. It'sin a small Ukrainian town, and the Russian army has been burning farms as they retreated.
The Ukrainians are hoping for better treatment from the Germans who are invading, However, the Germans round up the Jews into an old factory building, Thirteenyearold Jewish Yankel decides he does not trust the German soldiers, and runs

away with his younger brother on his back.
A farm girl, Yasia, shelters and feeds the two boys for the night, putting herself in danger so she must also flee.
Meanwhile, a German civil engineer, who is building a road through the marshes, is facing a moral dilemma.
He thought he could stay away from the Nazi mission by only doing his road building, but that proved impossible.


Rachel Seiffert writes with lovely spare prose, While there is terror and darkness in this book, kindness and compassion are also demonstrated, There is also the sense that people can be backed into "nowin" situations, even if they are courageous, in the presence of deep evil.
"A Boy in Winter" shows people making moral choices in terrible circumstances, The mental picture of Yankel carrying his little brother on his back for days, determined that they would survive, will remain with me.
This was a timely read since the world has been watching the people of Ukraine carrying their loved ones to safety from a new terror during the last month.
I read this book due to its longlisting for theWomens Prize, It had overlap with two books I have already this year, both nonfictional although one written in close to a fictional style, and both motivated by family connections to some of the most terrible events of the twentieth century.


sitelinkMaybe Esther: A Family Story by sitelinkKatja Petrowskaja born in Ukraine to a Russian speaking Jewishdescended but now nonreligious and Soviet family, as she picks her “way through the rubble of history” to research her family tree, including a greatgrandmother the maybe Esther of the books title who was shot for speaking to a German officer as she struggled, despite her age and infirmities, to make her way to the Jewish round up in Kiev that would preceded the Babi Yar massacre

My review

sitelink goodreads. com/review/show

sitelinkEast West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity" by sitelinkPhilippe Sands a powerful account of the legal and personal background behind the Nurenberg trials, which links back to the post WWI history of the now Ukranian city of Lviv and forward to the International Criminal Court, and which is given added poignancy and relevance by the authors family links to the first and legal links to the second.


This book, also set in the Ukraine at the time of the German occupation and enforcement of the holocaust, is entirely nonfictional albeit with clear factual inspiration but is also motivated by family connections.
The motivation behind the book is best explained in this excellent and moving Guardian article by the author.


sitelink theguardian. com/books/

Where she reveals that her own family connections are very different: My grandparents were Nazis.
I cant remember a time when I didnt know this, Opa my grandfather was in the Brownshirts, and was later a doctor with the Waffen SS Amfi, my grandmother, was an active party member.
something which has always lead her to consider what it is like to be on the wrong side of history.


This book itself was inspired by the story of Willi Ahrem, who managed to avoid military action by transferring to the construction corps and being stationed behind the lines in Nemirow, a small town in newly occupied Ukraine, where he was to oversee the building of a road He had done all he could to minimise his involvement in the war.
Yet only weeks after his posting, he awoke to the sound of the Jews of Nemirow being rounded up

Full details of the heroic way he dealt with this are at the below link:

sitelink yadvashem. org/righteous/fam

The equivalent character in the novel is Otto after Rachels grandfather Pohl, with effectively the same back story, and the book opens with him witnessing German soldiers rounding up Jews that have disobeyed a command to gather at the brickworks with some basic possessions as though for a short journey.
The book is largely set over the next three days of Novemberas that roundup plays out in way that is tragically inevitable to us,years later, but which those caught up in those events on all sides fail sometimes willfully to recognise even as it is happening.


Otto is one of a number of third person point of view characters, others include a peasant girl Yasia and her fiancee Mykola, a Red Army deserter now serving as an auxillary policeman for the Germans Ephraim, a Jewish man who cooperated with the request to report but is anxious about his headstrong son Yankel and his younger brother Momik who fled the previous night.
Yankel is the “boy in winter” of the title but in an interesting stylistic choice is never the main character and we only see him and sense his feeling and characters through those that interact with him.


The book has two memorable set pieces,

In the first Pohl who the author describes in her article as, compared to Willi Ahrem less a righteous German than a man who tries his best at the worst of all imaginable moments, desperate for workers to meet his demanding targets for completion of the road is ordered by the local SS commander to select workers from the gathered Jews.
Pohl sense a trap for himself given the unsuitability of those his foreman starts suggesting, and seeing the brutality with which the Jews are treated refuses to cooperate with what he sees as a degrading process for them the reader of course realises as tragically too late does Pohl when the sounds of repeated gunshots rings out later that the SS commander is offering him the chance to redeem a small number of the Jews.


In the second, we witness the inevitable but terrible and chaotic massacre, but from the viewpoint, via Mykola, of those forced to take part in facilitating it, desensitised by alcohol.


These both occur in the second third of the novel and in my view the story rather loses its impact in its final third, which focuses on Yasias sheltering of the two young brothers and then escape with them to her marshdwelling relatives.


Nevertheless a memorable story,


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