Moorby, Lincolnshire, England
september 1947
Outside the camp mess hall in Moorby Village, Marko Ivanets eyed the long, distant plume of dust from the British Army Jeep that was carrying his wife and daughter toward him at last. Tyrsa Dorochkin, a nurse who’d been with the Fourteenth Division since its inception, was loitering nearby, her eyes sparking with indignation and understanding that her nights sharing a bunk with the division’s Waffen-Sturmbannführer were over.
Marko turned away and twisted his hat in his hands. He was nervous, but what man wouldn’t be after not seeing his wife for four and a half years and meeting their daughter—born in his absence—for the first time? Especially a wife who had lost their only son. After arriving at the Rimini prisoner of war camp, he’d written letter after letter to Deremnytsia, desperate for some word from his family. When the letters were all returned, he’d assumed that Savka had disobeyed his order to leave with their son and she had died when the Red Army swung through the village, Taras taken as cannon fodder, perishing somewhere on the front.
The Jeep turned down the road between the village and the resettlement camp, passing hectares of potato fields the Ukrainians worked for the English. Besides the one thousand Ukrainians from the Fourteenth Division in the camp—and the other seven thousand who’d been sent to different villages in England and Scotland—most of the inhabitants of Moorby were spread across farms that still struggled to recover from reduced manpower during the war.
How surprised he’d been to get Savka’s first letter at Rimini in February of ’47, handed to him by a British guard while his unit was on the beach, taking their daily exercise. He’d stared blankly at the unfamiliar return address in Kraków, astonished to find Savka’s distinctive handwriting, and ecstatic that his wife had somehow survived the war, although she’d managed to get herself shot by the NKVD in the forest and lose Taras. His son haunted his every thought when he wasn’t seething with rage and devastation. How could Savka have let this happen? Could he ever forgive her? When MI-6 had recruited Marko to contact insurgents in Ukraine, he’d sent a coded message to Kuzak, only to discover that his bunker had been wiped out by the NKVD. Now Taras was lost to him, perhaps forever.
Marko hadn’t wanted to think of the NKVD. But the visit last summer at Rimini from the short, disturbing Soviet agent still haunted him. Marko remembered all too well the oily presence of the man, uttering his empty threats.
Your British commandant will not let me have the camp roster list of your men. But it will soon come into my possession. Each one of you will be hunted down and assassinated.
Not on Marko’s watch. The NKVD agent had thrown down the gauntlet and Marko could not resist taking it up. Unable to trust the British to protect a list with the names and birthplaces of eight thousand Ukrainian men who’d fought with the SS, he’d stolen the Rimini List, fully intending to burn it immediately. Yet each time he’d held it over the flames, he saw the NKVD agent’s shrewd, dark eyes. Marko still had the list in a safe place, but he thought of it constantly, perhaps a little obsessed with it himself, for it remained a distinct fuck you to the little man who wanted it so badly.
The approaching roar of the Jeep roused him from these dark thoughts. It finally pulled up in a cloud of dust—they’d not had rain for weeks—in front of the canteen, and Marko broke out in a cold sweat. Do not berate your wife, he reminded himself. She has suffered. He took a step forward and hesitated, waiting for the back door to open. Suddenly, there was Savka, somehow more beautiful than he remembered. He thought her eyes looked sad, clearly burdened with guilt at losing Taras, but they lit up the moment she saw him.
When she ran to him, he held her close, his cheek against the top of her head and her surprisingly short hair. “Where is Zoya?” he asked, looking behind her at the Jeep still parked outside Moorby Hall.
Savka laughed. “The driver offered to make her a matchstick doll—she left hers on the train. But she’s excited to finally meet her father.”
Another Jeep had arrived and parked beside the one that had brought Savka and Zoya—one driver shouting to the other. Marko flinched and closed his eyes. The memory of the big 150 mm howitzer thundering over his head, leveling huts, partisans scattering…
Säubert das Dorf!
Clean the village. The German words shouted by Nazi officers would haunt him to the end of his life, images flying at him, unbidden; a repetitive frame, or photograph, forever imprinted on his brain.
Savka was telling him of the journey from Poland, how she and Zoya endured the long, dusty line of trains across western Europe, and a boat over the channel to Dover, then London, and another train for Lincolnshire, where the army Jeep had been waiting for them. “How stunned I was to see these lush green fields,” she gushed, “and quaint cottages. We’re blessed to leave the USSR.”
Savka’s voice seemed too shrill, her smile forced, and he thought back to her letters, her admission that she’d run afoul of the NKVD, and had come to in Kuzak’s bunker, screaming for Taras. He studied her face, still captivated by the seductive allure that he’d fallen for in Lviv so long ago. Had she lied? Impossible. She’d never lied to him in sixteen years of marriage. His wife was timid and could not possibly have been turned by the Soviets. And yet…“I wonder how you so easily came to England,” he said, carefully observing her reaction. “Many of my men have tried to get their families out of Ukraine, but are blocked by the Soviets, refusing to issue exit visas.”
“You forget I was in Kraków,” she replied, her eyes flashing. “A friend who worked in the Polish resistance forged an exit visa for me.”
He wavered, eager to press her further, but instead, he forced a grin. “Let us not argue at our reunion,” he said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “Where is my daughter?”
The Jeep’s driver had come around to open the back door, and a pair of small black boots dangled briefly before the driver lifted her out. His daughter inched forward shyly, clutching a crude matchstick doll.
“Zoya…” Marko trailed off, staring at the child with incomprehension. He’d expected a little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, who looked like Taras—who looked like him—but the child Savka was passing off as his own stared up at him, her hair dark and curly, eyes almost black. “This is not my daughter,” he choked, backing away.
Savka blanched, her lower lip quivering. “Surely she takes after one of your ancestors—”
“Get her away from me,” he shouted and stormed off toward the canteen, leaving his wife and whoever’s bastard had come along with her.
Re: File #924073—Family Tytovsky
Dear Mrs. Ivanets:
We apologize for the delay in contacting you. You might appreciate that we have been backlogged with requests.
In your letter, you mentioned that your family could have been forced out of Ukraine by the Red Army as it pushed the Germans west in retreat. We have compiled lists of displaced refugees who were relocated in forced labor camps, persecuted or imprisoned in different locations during and after the war.
There was no mention of your mother, Mrs. Tytovsky, or your sister (or her daughter) in any of these camps. Your father and brother were listed in a German forced labor camp, but there was no record of them among the Allied Expeditionary Forces Displaced Person Registration cards. Not one labor passport, exit visa, declaration on a transport list, or record of death.
Sincerely,
Desmond Abrams
The Red Cross