A multi-layered memoir from historian and academic Sasha Colby in which she reveals the story of her grandmother who was deported by the Nazis from Ukraine in 1942 as a forced labourer to work in the Leica camera factory in Germany, an experience she managed to survive but about which she rarely wished to talk. Colby gradually uncovers the story, just like uncovering Matryoshka dolls. Irina Nikifortchuk was just 19 when she was taken to Germany. She managed to get a job in the camp hospital, where conditions were marginally better, and then had the good fortune to be chosen by the Leica family to work as a maid in their household. The second strand in the narrative is the story of the Leica family. Although they had to produce products for the Nazi war machine, they also managed to help many of their Jewish employees to leave the country and took others to work on the family estate, putting themselves at great risk. Irina ended up in Canada where she settled and started a family, and decades later her granddaughter decided to tell her story, piecing together the details from what Irina wanted to tell plus extensive and meticulous research. I found this a compelling and moving memoir, a tale of survival against all the odds, and a fascinating account of the Leica family and their factory, especially of Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, Irina’s rescuer and the family heiress.

Irina Kylynych arrives at a labor camp in Wetzlar Germany by train. It’s June 1942, and she has been taken from Ukraine to work at the Leica Camera Factory. The Eastern Workers, she is told upon arrival, are expected to work for the glory of Hitler and the German people. Those who do not work will be shot. Irina is nineteen.

Before the war, Ernst Leitz II’s company had labor policies that encouraged innovation and loyalty. He doesn’t support Hitler’s regime, so is faced with a difficult decision: supply Hitler’s military with the support of foreign forced laborers or see his company expropriated. If he and his daughter Elsie Kühn-Leitz stay in control, they can at least play a role in the resistance, help some escape, and relieve the suffering of others. Elsie’s role as the overseer of the Eastern workers’ welfare is Irina’s salvation. Elsie will select her to work as a maid in her home.

This story is told from Sasha Colby’s point of view, Irina’s granddaughter. She describes her family’s life, now safe and prospering in Canada, while weaving in stories her grandmother has shared about that dark period of her life. This is creative nonfiction, as is clarified in the Author’s Note: “This story is a combination of oral history, research, and imagination. Much of the historical dialogue has been fictionalized.”

This memoir is well written and informative. Readers will have different takeaways, but much of the current period that describes daily life challenged to engage. Older Irina’s preference for cooking and soap operas might describe many grandmothers. When she is ours, we will soak up every minute of reminiscing. This might be less true for outsiders. The most compelling figure is Elsie Kühn-Leitz. She, as her father, has strong moral fiber and guts. She remains cool in the face of challenge and dogged in her attempt to help those who have been forced into a life of slavery and misery. It is a book to recommend, certainly.

Thank you to ECW Press and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

This book evokes a wide range of responses and emotions. Yes, it is tragic but it also brings to life the happiness and hope of family and survival. It also features different perspectives and people, including those who played a role in resisting the Nazis, which is very interesting, it’s impossible not to appreciate books like this, which tell such important stories and this one does so very well.

A wonderful book. The thoughtful insight into what we might think are clean companies but latr turn out to be forced labor camps

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley

Sasha Colby’s new book is at once a memoir of family and brief history of Elise Kuhn-Leitz. The book works and doesn’t quite fit together.
Colby’s grandmother, Irina Nikortchu, was Ukrainian and forced labor at the Lecia camera factory. Eventually, she became a maid in the Leitz household, working for Elise Leitz. The parts detailing both Irina’s history as well as the more general Colby family history are great. There is so much there- not only Irina’s only experiences but also those of newcomers to Canada as well as the changing times of the 60s-70s. The interactions between Colby, her mother, and her grandmother come alive on the page.
The book lags a little when Colby details the experiences of Elise Leitz, who was a German woman and member of the Leitz family who resisted the Nazis in a variety of ways. Leitz herself was imprisoned for her actions. It isn’t that the story isn’t interesting. It is. The story should be better known outside of Germany. Yet, because parts of it are not in Leitz’s voice and told in a novelistic way, as if one were reading a historical novel, it didn’t quite work. This style is also used when discussing Irina’s experiences but the interviewing and story telling frame there saves it. Stepping into Irina’s viewpoint there works because Colby introduces it as a Irina telling a story to her daughter and granddaughter. There is none of that in the Leitz sections so it is a bit of a jar.
That said, the book is a good and moving read. You really do feel like you are in the room or in the kitchen with Irina and eating meat on a stick.