Sunday, September 15, 2024

When God looked the Other Way

When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and RedemptionWhen God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption by Wesley Adamczyk
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dramatic story of a family caught in a vortex of the II World War.
On 1 September 1939 Poland has been attacked from the West by Germany, this event started the war.
On 17 September Poland has been attacked by Soviet Union - this move has been previously agreed in a secret Molotov - Ribbentrop agreement.
Few months after the invasion Soviet authorities deported from occupied territory to Siberia and Kazakhstan some 600,000 Polish citizens.
Among them was the author of the book - Wiesio (Wesley) with his mother, brother and sister.
Their father/husband was away, he joined Polish Army when the war started, it took few years before they learned his fate.
I found the book quite exceptional, it has been written from the perspective of 8 y.o. boy.
It may be some kind of disappointment for readers who expected to find stories written by adults rationally explaining what was happening around them. 
Wiesio relies completely on his own memory and on what mother or sibling told him. His experiences are very limited - mother decided not to send him to the Communist school so he spends whole days just wandering around a hut in which they are living, he has no company other than an old man nearing his death.
Fortunately I read some other stories covering these events so I could enjoy a company of very young boy telling me about his passage through the hell.

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