Making Bombs for Hitler

Reading the plethora of messages on the wall, Natalia and Lida wonder how so many refugees will find their loved ones. If Natalia does not find her family, and even if she does, she will immigrate to Canada or the United States. She refuses to return to Lviv and live under Stalin. Lida is confused, because Pani Zemluk told her to say she was from Lviv. Natalia explains that people from prewar Poland could leave, but people from prewar Soviet Ukraine must return to their country. Lida dreams of happy times with her family and the lilac tree.

Shouting in the night draws Lida to the front gate where she finds Pani Zemluk holding a bloody, unconscious Luka. Pani Zemluk cleans his scalp wound. Luka wakes, sobbing uncontrollably. The Soviets deceived and trapped him. Sympathetic at first, as soon as they were out of sight of the Americans, the Red Army soldiers beat Luka and stole his goods. They called him a Nazi and were sending him to a Siberian concentration camp. His father was long dead. The soldiers shot some men and loaded Luka and others into a train car. They escaped by pulling up a floorboard and dropping under the train. Luka slipped past the drunken Soviet police at the border to the American side. Lida recognizes that Luka lost his family, his country, and his hope. She vows not to leave him. Luka is fearful the Soviets will return for him. Pani assures him they are safe and will get him to a new camp.

Lida and Luka know the Soviets will return for Luka, and probably Lida too. They leave the refugee camp and join crowds of other refugees walking from camp to camp, searching for loved ones, reading messages on camp walls, and listening to news about the Soviets’ actions. They do not give information about themselves, and do not register at any one camp. Lida finds a message that might be from Luka’s mother, but Luka knows the details are wrong. He crumples the message in despair, but Lida restores it to its place on the wall, remonstrating that it represents “someone’s loved one” (221).

They meet a Czech lady with two children: one dark haired and young, one blonde, fair, and slightly older. Lida soothes the restless older boy with a lullaby. She notices a mark on his arm: a tattoo signifying that the boy was “stolen” from his family and placed in a German family. The tattoo ensures that the children can never fully pass as German. When the war ended, German families abandoned these adopted children. The Czech woman rescued this child from a roadside. Lida is horrified the same thing might have happened to Larissa. Luka and Lida keep walking through the fall of 1945, and until they learn that neither the British nor the Americans are sending refugees back to the Soviet Union.

Now that they are safe from Soviet repatriation, Lida and Luka settle in a refugee camp in Germany with a large Ukrainian population. They lie and say they are from Lviv. From 1946-1947 the camp is home: Lida and Luka have no family, no one to sponsor their immigration to another country, and nowhere to go. They are now “displaced persons” or DPs. Lida earns food by using her sewing skills to fashion new clothes for refugees out of Soviet and Nazi uniforms. Luka becomes a pharmacist’s apprentice. The camp acquires a feeling of permanence, like a little city. Lida watches the mail every day, hoping for word from Larissa. In town, she searches faces for Larissa. Lida wonders what the Germans, who are friendly and have little food of their own, think about her and the other refugees. She remembers how they viewed her as enslaved, and it makes her uneasy. Lida finally tells a Red Cross helper that she suspects Larissa was placed with a Nazi family. The woman tells Lida it will be hard to find Larissa if she no longer remembers her life before the war, but they will try.

Years later, Lida and Luka are still in the displaced persons’ camp. Lida has her own room and shares a kitchen and bathroom with a few others. She sews all day. After work, she sits by a lilac bush, and its scent reminds her of Larissa and her family. Lida is sure Larissa is alive somewhere but wonders if she should try and forget her after all these years, since the Red Cross has been unable to find her.

Luka brings Lida a letter. She speculates it is from Zenia, who is now in Israel, or Natalia in Canada. The letter is from an unfamiliar address in Brantford, Canada. Lida opens it to find: a sprig of lilac, a photograph of Larissa with a dark-haired couple who are not the Nazis that Lida saw after the bombing, and a letter. Larissa writes that she has been searching for Lida and thought she saw her outside the burning factory, but the Nazi family kept her from going to Lida. Larissa lives in Canada with her adoptive parents, Marusia and Ivan Kravchuk. Her name is now Nadia. She is safe and her new parents love her. She misses Lida and longs to be with her again. Larissa’s new parents will sponsor Lida if she wants to immigrate to Canada: Larissa hopes that she will. Lida is overjoyed that Larissa found her. Luka is happy for Lida, but worried until Lida says that Luka will immigrate with her.