A review by marshaskrypuch
She Came from Mariupol by Natascha Wodin

5.0

This magnificent memoir explodes upon the reader, revealing the lives of the author's ancestors from pre-Revolutionary times in the Russian empire when they were wealthy merchants in Mariupol, through the First World War, the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian Revolution, the Holodomor, Stalin terror years, Siberian exile, World War II occupied Ukraine and also the Nazi slave raids where Ukrainians were captured and shipped to the Reich where they were worked and starved to death by the millions. The memoir begins and ends with the author as a beaten and downtrodden refugee in Germany.

This is a vast story to tell and Wodin's method is akin to smashing open one egg at a time in a big nest of them. Any one of the many historical eras had enough experience for an entire book (on a few occasions, a single paragraph could have made a book) and so while a vast history of a family is uncovered, I kept on wanting more detail in each of the eras.

Kudos to Natascha Wodin for writing about her family's experiences during so many times of Soviet and German history that have been propagandized and hidden.
#netgalley #nataschawodin