Winter Journey

I stumbled upon this book as a recommendation from another I had read. I love stories from World War II especially when told as flashbacks. I had not read anything based in Poland so this was all new to me. I usually avoid books that tell the story of a person or group being singled out for hatred so I wasn’t sure I would be able to read it. Ms. Armstrong’s book is heart wrenching. I had trouble putting it down.

The reason I only gave it 4 stars is because I do not enjoy reading graphic sex scenes. Halina’s relationships were a big part of who she was and how she responded to situations, but the sex scenes did not add to the book. I think they are better left to the imagination.

I read constantly. If I am touched by a book, however, I may not pick another one up for a few days because I need to think about what I read and my feelings toward it. It’s been nearly a week now and I haven’t gone on to another book. That’s how good this book is.

Halina Shore had been in Australia since she was a child. She and her mother had arrived after the war from Poland, but as much as Halina wanted to learn about her childhood, her mother refused to speak of it. After her mothers death, Halina a forensic dentist was invited to Poland, to the small village of Nowa Kalwaria to investigate the murders of hundreds of Jews during the Nazi occupation.

Halina herself was born in Poland and her object, while she was in the country for work, was to research her own history discover some, if not all, of her past. But the bitterness which shrouded Nowa Kalwaria remained, and in the eyes of the majority of Poles, the Jews were to blame for past atrocities.

As the forensic investigation deepened, the horrors of what was being uncovered rocked the small community was everything they had always believed a lie? What else would Halina discover?

Winter Journey is Aussie author Diane Armstrongs debut novel, and although fictional, was inspired by a true incident which took place in Poland in 1941. Tense, horrific, sad and emotional, Winter Journey is an exceptional historical fiction novel which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was recommended to me and I pass the recommendation forward.

Whatever possessed me to buy this book is a mystery since I’m exhausted from all the stories of the WWII pogroms. And yet, I did, and it was a good story about an individual surviving the pogrom at Jedwabne, Poland which, in this case, was given the fictional name of Nowa Kalwaria. Even though I am an American of Polish heritage and weak in the Polish language, it was a pleasure to read the Polish phrases and poems done correctly. Too many Polish-Americans write stories about Poland, but butcher the language when it’s used.
The author through her main character, Halina, indicates that she failed to read the Nobel Prize winning authors, Henryk Sienkiewicz (With Fire & Sword, The Deluge, and Pan Wolodejowski); Adam Mickiewicz (Pan Tadeusz & Forefather’s Eve); and, Wladyslaw Reymont’s, The Peasants, also a Nobel winner. Well, she should have and would have learned about other pogroms and the definition of a Cossack Candle.
My family originated from Lyse, Poland (mother’s side) and Zbojna, Poland (father’s side), Podlaskie Wojewodship, Puszcza Zielona Kurpiowska (the Green Primeval Forest), which is directly west of Jedwabne and north, northwest of Lomza, and so, I’m familiar with the area of the novel.
During the early stages of WWII, this zone was occupied by the Russians. Jewish people at the time were pleased with the Russian occupation and supported the NKVD in compiling lists of Poles to be deported to Siberia (estimated at 22,353 which included entire families). There were arrests, expulsions, and executions. Hence, there was no love lost between Catholic Poles and Jewish Poles when the Germans replaced the Russian occupants. In 1941, German Einsatzgruppen (task forces) murdered some Jews in the Jedwabne region and encouraged Poles to commit pogroms. The Jedwabne area, while under German control, was given orders to cleanse itself of Jews, which it did under German supervision. It is estimated, more realistically, that 300-350 people were burned alive within that barn. Trials held during the 1950s convicted 22 Polish peasants, some of whom were illiterate, for the crime and one was condemned to death.
That being said, the story contained in this novel had segments that made me maudlin. I’m not quite sure how I felt about Halina, the main character, and and I’m not sure the current residents of the town were that hostile to the investigators. I couldn’t quite accept Halina’s personality and her reactions to events . The priest, however, I did like (and not that I’m fond of clergy). Also, I can’t quite accept the British dreamt, learnt, and leant. Well, maybe I can take dreamt, but I still like the American spellings even though I love British slang, such as “fobbed off.” Finally, the author kept using the Polish phrase “cholera psia krew.” I always heard it used in just the opposite way or “psia krew cholera” (dog’s blood, sickness (or cholera as it’s understood in English).
Szczesc Boze (God bless)

I read many books about WWII and the Holocaust, so when I read the synopsis and reviews on this I bought it. I found it off to a rather slow start; Armstrong takes her time to establish the main character, Halina, and her life in Australia. But as the plot gets going, the reader will find that some of the earlier incidents play into the overall story. It’s an interesting premise — a forensic dentist who Polish by birth travels to Poland many years after WWII to help identify the ages and sexes of Jews buried in a mass grave who were burned to death in a local resident’s barn. The exhumation of the bodies is meant to document whether local Poles were responsible for the death of the Jews or whether the Jews were murdered by Nazis. Eventually, her time working in Poland also leads Halina to many surprising and painful revelations about her family and its past. The story is well-researched, but at times I felt that it could have moved a bit faster – perhaps with the elimination of the romantic relationships which were rather graphic and were unnecessary additions to the story. However, I believe the overall story is worth reading if only for the reader to consider the depths of depravity to which humans will descend when they are brainwashed and filled with hateful fury.

A complex, intricate, disturbing novel. Eloquently written but if it wasnt based on such heinous true events would be quite unbelievable. As is usually the case with fiction that veers between two separate eras trying to keep up with the characters was not easy. And the lengthy descriptions of the science of forensic dentistry was mind boggling at times. However, I couldnt put it down, which is always the test of a good book.

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