Waiting for the Storks by Katrina Nannestad

Title: Waiting for the Storks

Author: Katrina Nannestad

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: ABC Books/HarperCollins

Published: 3^rd November 2022

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 352

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: The powerful new novel from master storyteller Katrina Nannestad.

I don’t want to remember the truck, or the night I was taken, or the family I left behind. I am not a sad Polish girl. I am a good and happy German girl.

I am. I am. I am.

It’s the Second World War and Himmler’s Lebensborn Program is in full flight when eight-year-old Zofia Ulinski is kidnapped by the Germans. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, just like the other Polish children taken from their families and robbed of their names, their language, their heritage.

But when Zofia is adopted into a wealthy and loving German family, it is easier, it is safer to bury her past, deep down, so everything is forgotten. Until the Polish boy arrives.

And the past comes back to haunt her.

From Katrina Nannestad, multi-award-winning author of We Are Wolves and Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief, comes a story about family lost and found, and the choices we make when we don’t have a choice at all.

~*~

Katrina Nannestad’s latest book, Waiting for the Storks, is perhaps her most heart-breaking book yet, and one that sensitive readers may need to take their time with or may not be suitable for them. It deals with themes that I’ve never read about before in any book for any age group. World War Two is marching across Europe, and the Nazis are taking territory as they invade countries and drive people out of their homes, sending Jews and those they don’t like to concentration camps. But Himmler has a plan for the Lebensborn Program – a program that sought to increase the Aryan population of Nazi-occupied territories, and one of the things they did to encourage the population growth was to kidnap blonde-haired, blue-eyed children from the occupied nations such as Poland, and assess them, before Germanising them and sending them out to be adopted or trained to be mothers and soldiers for the Reich. To do this, they stripped the children of their identities and gave them new ones – which is where Zofia – the protagonist of Waiting for the Storks – comes in.

Zofia is living a happy life with Mama and Tata in Poland during the war – they’re affected by the rationing and shortages and Nazi occupation, but one day she is out with Mama when they run into some Nazis, who talk about her like she has pure Aryan or German blood. Zofia is taken from her family and crammed into a truck with lots of other blonde-haired, blue-eyed children – they’re all robbed of their families, identities, and everything about them that is Polish, and taught to be German. Some are adopted, others are sent to a boarding school. Zofia – now Sophia – is adopted by a Nazi doctor and his wife. And for several years, she lives a good life, and forgets her past, and who she is. Until a Polish boy arrives at her friend, Gudrun’s farm – and she starts to remember – who she is, and who he is as the dying days of the war head towards them.

This book is heartbreaking and hopeful from the first page. We know that something horrible is coming – it always seems to be the case that when things are peaceful and calm, it will only be a matter of time before something goes wrong. My heart was shattered as Zofia was kidnapped and taught to forget who she was – it was another kind of genocide – killing someone’s culture and identity, making them forget who they are. It is something that has happened in many contexts throughout Western history, and it should never happen to anyone – we should all be allowed to embrace and have our culture and language in our lives. For Zofia, this tragedy and trauma is something she has to learn to cope with, she has choices to make – or does she? Is the choice forced upon her as a way to survive? It felt like she was in an impossible situation – I could see that she wanted to remember but she also wanted to survive, and even though she tried to find ways to do so at the start, it all fell apart.

Throughout the book, Zofia’s story uses folk tales, fairy tales, and fables to reflect what she is going through, and what may happen as the war progresses. Like Katrina’s previous books, We Are Wolves and Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief, Waiting for the Storks looks at war through the eyes of a child, and at events and experiences that are often not explored in other books set during World War Two. Things like this may be mentioned, but as a reader, I’ve never read about it and experienced it through the eyes of a character. It is so heartbreaking that this happened – Katrina acknowledges in her note that many children never got back to their families for various reasons – and that some never found out who they really were. This was the goal of the Nazis in taking these children at such young ages – so they would forget who they really were.

I felt for these children – given new names, sometimes the German version of their Polish name (the focus in this novel is on the Polish experience), sometimes an entirely new name. They are given new birthdays, forced to join the Hitler You and League of German Girls, and taught what their duty to the Reich was – to love Hitler, and to be the perfect mother to as many children as possible – so they could get the bronze, silver, or gold German Mother’s cross. This medal is spoken about in the book at some stage. I wanted to help Zofia throughout this book, and I could see why she gave in – it was, as she understood, better to pretend and forget than to resist – but the slow unravelling proved that you can never really forget who you are – at least for Zofia – and that there will always be people you can trust to help you get back to where you really belong – which is where the hopeful ending comes in, and I felt that the entire story was well-written and powerful, and drew me into the story, so I felt like I was experiencing everything with Zofia as I was reading.

Zofia’s confusion and conflict throughout the book were powerful and felt like it evoked a sense of what these children would have gone through during these awful years. I think it is important to tell stories like this – to let people know that it happened, and we should be able to read about them from all cultures that went through this because I think it will make people more compassionate and understanding if we know what really happened – and education will help us become a unified community. If we understand these awful things happened and know they should never have happened in the first place, maybe we will be able to be more united. This book broke my heart – it is only one example, one story, albeit a fictional one about stealing children to make them acceptable to those in power, and I think it is a book that can introduce us to these issues and allow us as readers a window into the real stories and a way to find them and read them and learn more about history beyond what is printed in text books and other books. I think this is a powerful and important book that can start conversations and introduce readers to a different aspect of history that they may not know about or know much about – and that is why I love Katrina Nannestad’s historical fiction books. They give voices to people who might have been left out of history and allow us to gain insight into important history that might not be taught often. I look forward to her next book like this.