Alias Anna by Susan Hood with Greg Dawson

Zhanna Dimitrinov Arshanskya was born April 1, 1927 in Ukraine, a part of the Soviet Union. Zhanna's mother Sara, an avid reader, chose the Russian name closest to Joan of Arc, beloved heroine of France.

Zhanna and her parents lived in the resort town of Berdyansk. Her father made fruit-flavoured candies and fine caramels which he sold on the street outside their home. Zhanna's father was a self-taught violinist who played at family weddings and in the cinema for the American silent movies. From the money he earned, Zhanna's papa bought a small, upright Bechstein piano from Germany. It was the heart of their home, a spiritual refuge from Communism.

Their home had no hot water, electricity, indoor plumbing or even a refrigerator, but it was a happy one with two grandparents, her mother and father, Zhanna and her baby sister, Frina.

As a three-year-old, Zhanna often wandered around Berdyansk. In the evenings, Zhanna would wait for her papa's good friend, Nicoli who came to their home to play piano. Zhanna delighted in the violin and piano, as they played Rossini, Bizet and Tchaikovsky. She often fell asleep in the living room to their music.

Zhanna refused to attend kindergarten. To stop her wandering, her papa had her study piano with a family friend and pianist, Svetlana. At first Zhanna did not co-operate but gradually as she watched Svetlana play, she grew to love her. Soon Zhanna was playing Chopin, Brahms and Beethoven. Her father began to have small concerts at home with family and friends. He often closed the shutters, darkening the room so Zhanna could display her mastery of the music and keyboard.

In the 1930's, Josef Vissarionvich Dzhugashvili - known as Josef Stalin, wanted to modernize the Soviet Union. To do that, he took over Ukraine's farms, shipped thousands of farming families to Siberia, and sold the grain to other countries in order to buy heavy industrial equipment. With their crops confiscated, the people began to starve. Zhanna saw beggars on the streets as people starved. Her father, who had never joined the Communist party, was repeatedly arrested and questioned. 

Eventually Zhanna's family had to leave Berdyansk. They left behind their grandparents, taking only their violin and small piano. It was now 1935 and Zhanna's family settled in Kharkov, a vibrant center of Jewish culture. Their home was a one room apartment on Katsarskaya Street. Dimitri earned money playing violin and giving piano lessons. 

Dimitri decided to take eight-year-old Zhanna and six-year-old Frina to audition at the renowned Kharkov Conservatory. The judges were so impressed that the girls were each awarded two hundred ruble monthly scholarships. They would study under renowned teacher, Abram Lvovsik Luntz. Under his tutelage, Zhanna learned Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu, with which she became obsessed. The school also paired the sisters together on two pianos. Their concert debut was enormously successful, resulting in many new opportunities.

In 1939, Zhanna was twelve and Frina was ten years old. Life seemed to get better with Zhanna's grandparents moving to Kharkov and opening a sweets shop. Zhanna and Frina continued to compete and after a competition at the Moscow State Conservatory, had a private audition with as classmate of Rachmaninoff, Alexander Borisovich Goldenweiser. He offered to take them on as pupils but their family could not afford to live on the meager scholarship he offered.

Meanwhile war raged across Europe, until finally in June of 1941 it came to Ukraine.Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Kharkov was a German bombing target and so Zhanna's school became a refugee center. As Stalin's army retreated east, they destroyed everything burning crops and buildings. Over a million people fled Kharkov, and went east to the Ural Mountains and Siberia. Among those were Zhanna's aunt and uncle and her two cousins, Tamara and Celia. They begged Zhanna's mother to flee as well but her health was not good. So Zhanna's family stayed behind. They did not know about Hitler because Stalin had hidden news of Hitler's crimes from the people. They didn't know about the murders, or the mobile killing squads that murdered Communists, Romas and Jews.

On September 29, 1941, Babi Yar, the destruction of almost THIRTY-FOUR THOUSAND Jewish men, women and children occurred outside of Kyiv. This mass murder was done by the Einsatzgruppen. In late October, they came to Kharkov. First the Nazi soldiers terrorized Zhanna's family, demanding gold, then they returned to pillage their apartment, taking Dimitri's violin. Others were not so lucky. The bodies of more than one hundred people hung from the trees in Kharkov.

On December 14, 1941, all Jews in Kharkov were to report to the center of town. Zhanna said good-bye to her best friend Svetlana Gaponovitch, not knowing if she would ever see her again. On December 15, they were told they were being sent away to work.Just before leaving, Zhanna raced home and retrieved the music to Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu. Then, Zhanna, Frina, her parents and grandparents began the long march to an abandoned tractor factory along with sixteen thousand other Jews.They spent the next two weeks in the abandoned factory barracks, in freezing conditions, with no bathrooms and no food. Twice Zhanna left the barracks and walked back to Kharkov to bring food scraps back to her family. She was helped by a family who took her in and allowed her to stay overnight and fed her.

The Nazis told them that they were being taken to Poltava, which happened to be Zhanna's papa's hometown. Her father suspected that they were being taken to their deaths, as the trucks left in the opposite direction to Poltava. Shortly after Christmas, it was Zhanna's family's turn to leave. They were to be marched four miles south to a ravine which would become known as Drobitsky Yar. Zhanna's father was determined to save Zhanna, so he bribed the Ukrainian soldier walking alongside them to look the other way while Zhanna left the march. He was successful.

Now on the run, Zhanna fled back to Kharkov, stopping once again at the home of the family who had sheltered and fed her on her trips back and forth to the barracks. In Kharkov, Zhanna was turned away by her friend, Svetlana Gaponovitch's family but taken in by another classmate's family whose mother was rumoured to be an anti-Semite. Thus began her long journey that would lead ultimately to freedom.

Discussion

Alias Anna tells the story of Zhanna Dimitrinov Arshanskya, the mother of co-author, Greg Dawson and her escape from certain death at the hands of the Nazis in Ukraine during the Holocaust. Alias Anna is a true story, told in verse. It's important because it was written for children. As Greg Dawson writes, "Alias Anna brings the story of the Shoah in Ukraine to a vast new audience, arguably the most important of all, the next generation to inherit the world and become keeps of the flame. 'Never again.' "

Zhanna's story is divided into six parts, Overture, Prelude, Fugue, Invention, Variations and Bridge - each named for a musical term. Her story is told using poems in free verse. In a section titled Poetry Notes at the back, Hood writes about the many poetic forms used in the novel. These forms include a tercet which is a poem with stanzas of three lines, a reverso poem which "reads one way going down and presents another idea or point of view when the same lines are read going up.", an elegy which is used to "praise or mourn the dead," and a haiku, "a traditional Japanese form of unrhymed poetry, originally written as one vertical line and measured in morae, or breaths. There are many more forms used in the telling of Zhanna's story as noted at the back.

The novel opens with a real life event involving Zhanna's granddaughter, Aimee, who is Greg Dawson's daughter, writing a letter to her grandmother about a history project that requires her "to find out as much as possible about our grandparents and what was going on when they were 13 years old..." Zhanna had only spoken to her son Greg, once about the Shoah. The events were so traumatic they were sealed inside her heart never to be spoken about again. Until Aimee's request. According to Greg Dawson, as related in the section titled, Finding Zhanna's Story, his mother wrote back a lengthy letter and found the determination and courage to share her story.

In Alias Anna, Hood portrays Zhanna's early life living in the small village of  Berdyansk so readers understand what life was like before both Stalin and the Holodomor and before the Shoah. Although they did not have any of the modern amenities we take for granted today, their life was a happy one. That is until Stalin began to plunder the farms and resources of Ukraine, leaving the people starving. But the arrival of the Nazis heralded a new form of terror: the beginning of the mass murder Ukrainian Jews. This was the beginning of the Hitler's final solution, a terror that would spread to other European countries and for which the Nazis would devise more efficient ways of achieving via gas chambers.

In addition to being a brilliant pianist, Zhanna was also a resourceful, courageous and intelligent girl. Despite the trauma of losing her parents, she focused only on what her father's last words were, "I don't care what you do. Just live."  So when Zhanna escaped the massacre of her parents and other Jews in what came to be known as Drobitsky Yar, she and Frina (who also escaped) had to forge new identities and learn to survive. Those new identities were Anna  and Marina Morozova, forming the basis of the novel's title, Alias Anna. Eventually, the two talented girls found themselves giving nightly performances to German soldiers - those same soldiers who murdered Jews by day but by night were the epitome of respectability and culture. This must have been both painful and disgusting for Zhanna and Frina. But they did this to survive, to honour the sacrifice her parents made.

"How could she do it?
Play for the enemy
who had killed her family?
'I don't care what you do. Just stay alive.'
This was what it took to stay alive.
So Zhanna closed her eyes and played
for the memory of her family."

Alias Anna is such an important novel because it's intended for middle grade readers who often do not know about the Holocaust. It's timely in light of the current conflict in Ukraine, an area of Europe that has experienced ongoing conflict for decades. Zhanna questioned how it was possible to bring such a story to children. In his With Gratitude section, Dawson writes, "This is how: with rhythmic, accessible verse in service of a faithful abridging of the story for youthful sensibilities." Alias Anna does just that. It doesn't overwhelm young readers with horrific details but gives them just enough to understand what happened. Zhanna's story is told in an interesting way, with easy to read poems, the style of which vary, engaging readers as they move through the book. 

The authors open the novel with a map of the region, indicating Zhanna and Frina's journey throughout World War II. At the back of the novel are extensive notes for readers including sections on Photographs, The Letters which explores the significant of Zhanna's letter to Aimee, Finding Zhanna's Story which details Greg's discovery of his mother's incredible story, a list of The Pieces Zhanna and Frina Played, Hitler Stalin and Music, Field Trips and Places of Note, Poetry Notes on the types of poems in the novel, Sources, Quote Sources, Websites, News Reports, Films, and a Bibliography. Hood and Dawson have offered many resources for readers, educators and parents to explore.

Teachers, librarians and parents are all encouraged to make use of Alias Anna as a way to educate young children about the Shoah, the Holodomor and as to what can happen when bullying, bigotry and racism are allowed to grow. We owe it to the Zhannas and Frinas of the past to pass on these lessons learned as such a terrible cost.

Book Details:

Alias Anna by Susan Hood with Greg Dawson
New York: HarperCollins Children's Books   2022
339 pp.