Trapped In Hitler's Web by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

It is October 1942. Nathan Segal and Maria Fediuk are considering the ad on the wall outside the Reich Employment Office, in Nazi-occupied Lviv, Ukraine. Nathan and Maria are from the village of Viteretz which they have fled because Nathan is Jewish.  He had escaped the Nazis and arrived at Maria's home begging for refuge. Now under the assumed identity of a Christian by the name of Bohdan Sawchuk who had been murdered by the Soviets, Nathan along with Maria have fled to Lviv. Maria has left behind her mother and her older sister, Krystia. 

Maria believes applying to work for the Reich, if effect, hiding in plain sight, might just be what works. The necessary forms are filled out and Maria sees that they have been assigned to work in a metalworks factory. The young typist, scans their forms and realizes Maria is only eleven years old and Nathan, just twelve years old. She carefully changes their work assignment to farm work in the Austrian Alps. They will be on the Huber farm in Thaur, Ostmark, the Nazi name for Austria.

At the train station, they are directed to the tracks where the train will take them to Innsbruck. Only Maria and Nathan along with a young girl Maya and her sister Krystia are waiting for that train. Maria learns that they were captured on the way to school.

When the train arrives, they are loaded onto a boxcar crammed with other kids, all exhausted. The train stops in Belzec where some children are removed and again in Vienna. Then at Salzburg, Nathan is forced off the train and Maria is made to go onto Innsbruck alone.

Maria is terrified, wondering if Nathan will be able to pass as a non Jew and if she will be able to survive without him. She arrives in Innsbruck but is locked up until the following morning when the farmer comes to pick her up. The man who comes to pick her up is Herr Lang, the father of Frau Huber who runs the farm. Herr Lang promptly takes Maria's passport and her identity papers.

Maria is surprised at the size of the Huber farm, which consists of "one large house, barns and sheds, and vast vegetable fields" many chickens and eight cows. The vegetable fields are filled with beets, carrots, cabbage and onions. There are also large fields of potatoes.

Beatrice Huber is disappointed at the arrival of only Maria when they were expecting many more workers. She sends Maria to dig potatoes with Bianka, another worker kidnapped in Warsaw.  At noon, Frau Huber tells Bianka and Maria they can take two potatoes from the field every day but warns them not to let anyone see them do this.

At lunch, while eating her ration of one black bun, the Maria and the other workers are visited by Blockleiter Doris Schutt who visits the farms, keeping track of the foreign workers as well as reporting on the Aryans like the Hubers and Langs.  She gives Maria a badge with the letter P on it signifying she is Polish. Bianka explains that because the area of the Ukraine she is from was part of Poland before the war, she is considered Polish. There are other workers who are from the Soviet Ukraine as well as Aryan workers from countries allied with Germany.

As the days pass, Maria begins to doubt her decision to work for the Nazis as a way of hiding from them. Harvesting the potatoes makes Maria think of all the starving people back in the Ukraine. As she is forced to cook delicious meals for the Nazi youth who come to the farm to help the harvest, Maria can't help but think of those who were robbed of the food they need to survive. Maria also learns that, despite what the poster said, they do not get Sundays off nor are they paid. She and the other workers must also deal with the cruel Blockleiter who continues to visit and scrutinize the workings of the farm almost every day. Even worse is Frau Huber's daughter, Sophie who belongs to the League of German Girls. Sophie is dismissive and abusive towards Maria and Bianka, calls her mother by the formal Frau Huber and spies on her own family for the Nazis.

When Frau Huber's son Otto returns from the Eastern Front, with a leg wound, he is not what Maria expects. After Sophie calls the Russians "subhuman", Otto reminds her that the people she considers "subhuman" are fighting with intelligence and bravery. Otto repairs the barn that Maria and Bianka sleep in and thanks her for the work done on the family farm. Unexpectedly he then offers her information on how to escape to Switzerland. With this new knowledge, Maria decides she has to try to find Nathan in Salzburg and pass on the information to him. But how will she travel to Salzburg without her identity papers?

Discussion

Trapped In Hitler's Web is another outstanding novel by Canadian author, Marsha Skrypuch. This book continues the story of the Fediuk family begun in her earlier novel, Don't Tell The Enemy. The focus on that novel was on the character of Krystia, Maria's older sister. Now Maria's story is told in Trapped In Hitler's Web, as she and Nathan flee further into the Reich, hoping to save themselves and help those back home.

In this novel, Skrypuch focuses on life in the Third Reich, specifically daily life in Austria, renamed Ostmark by the Nazis. Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938 and like other countries, its riches plundered to supply Germans and the Nazi army. The people who lived in Eastern Europe, in Poland and the Ukraine were labelled Slavs by the Nazis and considered "subhuman". It was Hitler's intent to starve and work them to death, emptying the rich lands of these countries so they could be resettled with German "Aryan" citizens. The war created a labour shortage in Germany and workers were brought in from Eastern Europe. While Jews were outright murdered in Eastern Europe, people like Maria, labelled Slavs and Poles and therefore considered subhuman, were tricked into coming to work in the Reich, believing they would be well fed and paid. This was not the case as Maria and Nathan quickly discover.

Maria is sent to a farm owned by Herr and Frau Lang and managed by their daughter Frau Huber, whose son Otto and husband are away fighting on the Eastern Front. The Langs do not support Hitler, but Frau Huber, although kind, seems to dislike "Slavs". However, as time passes, Maria realizes that Frau Huber tries to defy the Nazis in little ways, such as allowing the workers to take extra food.

Skrypuch portrays how Nazism effected family life in Austria. In particular, young people were indoctrinated to believe they were superior to other races and therefore had the right to treat them any way they wanted, even to beating and murdering people. In the novel,  Frau Huber has watched her daughter Sophie becoming increasingly more strident in her beliefs,  brainwashed by the Nazi youth group she belongs to. For example, at Christmas, Maria learns that Sophie and her family no longer celebrate Christmas. Instead of decorating a Christmas tree with traditional candles and festive ornaments, Sophie hangs a silver swastika on the Christmas tree. She tells Maria  "We celebrate Rauhnacht. Christ was a Jew. Why would we celebrate a Jew's birth? Our celebration is to give tribute to our holy father, Adolf Hitler." Sophie considers "A hanged Jew swinging on a scaffold" to be both interesting and funny. Shocked, Maria wonders, "What kind of world did I live in where people like Sophie thought it was funny to hang a replica of a murdered Jew onto a Christmas tree?"  When the tree is eventually cut and put up, Frau Huber does not allow her daughter to place the hanged Jew ornament on the tree.

This scene serves to show how Nazism perverted traditions. This scene is based on an old Bavarian tradition known as Rauhnaucht, celebrated during the Christmas season, and somewhat similar to Halloween in North America. People use incense to cleanse their homes of evil spirits (hence the word Rauch which means smoke) and sometimes dress in costumes, making noise to drive away monsters and evil beings. As with Halloween, children sometimes go from house to house asking for treats. But for Sophie, Christmas has lost its meaning and has turned macabre.

Skrypuch demonstrates how Nazism perverted family structure as well, removing children from the guiding influence of their parents, whom they were encouraged to address formally rather than the respectful, Mutter and Vater.

The years of Nazi socialism has also distorted social classes with the Aryan class simply stealing the property of murdered Jewish citizens. When Maria accompanies Frau Huber to Salzburg as she visits her wounded son, she begins to see the consequences of years of Nazi rule. The house Frau Schwarz lives in, has been stolen from a Jewish family who were likely executed.  Frau Schwarz steals designer dresses, has the labels removed and new false labels of her own shop sewn on. Maria sees people on the tram who are healthy looking, in contrast to the starving, emaciated slaves working on farms and on the bridge. Using the descriptions of every day events, Skrypuch is able to portray to her readers the contrast between those people enslaved by the Nazis and the "Aryan" population.

Throughout the novel, Maria struggles to come to terms with working for the Reich. Her initial intentions were good ones, to save Nathan and support her family. But when neither seems to have happened she experiences much internal conflict. As a result, she finds it difficult to accept Otto's thanks for her help on his family's farm. "I had mixed feelings about assisting anyone who was working on the Nazi side. I had come here for my own goals -- to help Nathan escape and to earn money so Mama and Krystia could survive the war. This farm was producing food for my enemy, and while I was helping the wrong side, what had I done for Mama, Krystia, or Nathan?"

One of the more poignant events in the novel occurs when Maria and Anna kneel in a small park opposite a Catholic church to hear Mass in Salzburg. Forbidden from entering the church by the laws in place, Maria and Anna find a place near the church. They are seen by the priest who blesses them and leaves the door ajar so they can hear the Mass. It's a touching example of the devotion many Catholics continued to have, despite serious persecution.

Trapped In Hitler's Web is a well written, interesting story that continues the saga of a cast of Ukrainian characters during World War II. The novel ends with Maria meeting up with her sister Krystia and learning some heartbreaking news about her family. They flee the Huber farm, narrowly escaping a death squad in the forest. With the death of Hitler and the end of the war, they finally arrive at a refugee camp and begin plans to travel to their Aunt Stefa Pidhirney in Toronto, Canada. 

The novel holds special significance for Marsha Skrypuch, whose father-in-law escaped both the Soviets and the Nazis by fleeing into the Reich where he worked as a farm laborer. He survived the war, ending up in a refugee camp. Trapped In Hitler's Web is a fine testament to him and many other survivors of the brutal Nazi regime.

Book Details:

Trapped In Hitler's Web by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
New York: Scholastic Inc.    2020
228 pp.