Refugees

My three novels, Ikons, Banners, and Slogans, are based on a family history of immigrants and refugees.  While the immigrants' story shouts out from a trail of ships' manifests, passports, census records, and official documents; the refugees' story whispers through grainy black and white photographs and the hushed conversions of memories better left unsaid.

Belarus diaspora - 1915

Diaspora

In 1915 the Russian government instigated a scorched earth program to stop the advancing German army and ordered the evacuation of its western frontier.  My father's village, Hutava, was one of the hundreds abandoned.  While the plight of the inhabitants merited little more than a paragraph in history books, the event was seared into my father's memory.

Refugee Transportation

"We left with our cattle, horses, pigs and our goods.  We traveled in covered wagons until we reached Warsaw.  It took us five months.  We had no food left, no home--lost.  The Russian government put us on a freight train to Siberia, Chelyabinsk.  In the middle of the trip my mother got off to get water.  It was about 40 below and the train left without her.  It took her three months to find us."

The Silence of Horror

Not all refugees were fortunate enough to relate their ordeal.  In Russia's hardest hit areas, parents were faced with choices seldom passed on in family lore.  As food shortages and disease took their toll, mothers were forced to make heart rendering decisions.  How do you explain to those in a land of plenty you had to choose which child was fed and which was starved?  How do you tell your surviving children you abandoned their siblings and left them to fend for themselves?  How do you relate these horrors to those who know only comfort?

Abandoned Russian children in the famine region

In authoring Slogans: Our Children, Our Future, I felt obligated to speak for those muted voices.  It was not enough as a writer of historical-fiction to coldly chronicle events, but to also to relive its anguish.  It was nearly impossible for me to imagine what they went through, let alone reach inside their souls and expose their raw emotions.  It was difficult, but their silent screams made it necessary. 

Refugees awaiting transport - 1914

The refugees' story still continues.  But instead of grainy back and white, today their plight is broadcast in high-definition color.  Their faces still reflect the same fear of the unknown as those from a century ago.  Will a future writer tell their story?

Refugees awaiting transport - 2015

Breaking the silence