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    The Girl in the Haystack
    The Girl in the Haystack
    The Girl in the Haystack
    Ebook62 pages36 minutes

    The Girl in the Haystack

    By Bryon MacWilliams

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    About this ebook

    Hours after Germany invades the Soviet Union in 1941, nationalists in a small Ukrainian town carry out a pogrom against local Jews, killing dozens and leaving others for dead. One survivor is a seven-year-old girl. Lyuba is forced from her home into a Nazi ghetto, then spirited away, into hiding, for nearly two years -- on a farm, in haystacks.


    Under the hay Lyuba discovers the will to persevere, to survive. Even as her eyes open to the moral failings of her Ukrainian neighbors, she takes heart in the kindness of the Ukrainian farmer who is hiding her at great risk to himself and his family. She's encouraged, too, by thoughts of reunion with her older sister, Hanna, who is in hiding in town. But it's her uncommon bond with the farmer's dog, Brisko, that helps Lyuba through her greatest moments of peril, and despair.


    For Lyuba the dog becomes not just a guardian, but a guardian angel.


    The real Lyuba -- now living under a different name in the United States -- tells her own story in The Girl in the Haystack, weaving a vivid, suspenseful narrative that addresses simply the complex matters of culture and ethnicity, trust and distrust, courage and cowardice. It is a story that has waited more than seventy years to be told.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherServing House Books
    Release dateApr 29, 2019
    ISBN9781947175099
    The Girl in the Haystack

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      Book preview

      The Girl in the Haystack - Bryon MacWilliams

      The Girl in the Haystack

      by

      Bryon MacWilliams

      The Girl in the Haystack

      Copyright © 2019 Bryon MacWilliams

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the copyright holder, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

      ISBN: 978-1-947175-09-9

      Ebook ISBN: 978-1-947175-14-3

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2018912693

      Cover Design by Kristen Radtke

      Serving House Books logo by Barry Lereng Wilmont

      Published by Serving House Books

      Copenhagen, Denmark, Florham Park, NJ

      www.servinghousebooks.com

      Member of The Independent Book Publishers Association

      First Serving House Books Edition 2019

      For Laura

      Contents

      Author’s Note

      The Day After

      Grandmother’s House

      Secret Places

      The Ghetto

      Just in Time

      Dog Meets Girl

      First Haystack

      More and More People

      Mice, Rats, Lice

      The Barn

      Stillness

      Eighteen Months

      The Horsemen

      Unexpected Visitors

      Like Out of a Book

      Goodbyes

      Liberation

      About

      Tuchin During the Holocaust

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Author’s Note

      This story was told to me, in conversations, by the woman who lived through it — as a girl — nearly eighty years ago. Voices are recreated, facts are not.

      — B.D.M.

      The Day After

      My father is calling my name.

      I say, I’m over here!

      He walks over to me, stops, looks down. He’s crying. He turns, calls my name again, walks away. He walks over, walks away, walks over. He won’t stop calling my name.

      Here I am! Here I am!

      Wait. Why is a sheet covering my face, my body?

      I can see the light bulb in the kitchen through the fabric. I can see my father.

      Why can’t he see me?

      I try to lift my arm to pull aside the sheet but nothing happens, nothing moves.

      Last night our neighbors, men, dragged my mother from the house into the dirt road. They kicked her and hit her with the fat ends of their guns. My older sister, Hanna, and I watched them do it. We stood in the doorway, screaming. When the men were done they walked back toward the house, toward us. Hanna pulled me away by the hand.

      When I next opened my eyes I was on the floor, under a bed. My mother’s clothes iron was under the bed, too. I reached for it, but my hand wouldn’t move. I tried to crawl out from under, but my body wouldn’t move.

      Now I’m lying on my back on the divan and I’m covered by a sheet.

      My uncle says from somewhere, Let’s help Pirl, my mother, at least she’s still with us.

      Oh.

      My Uncle Friedel thinks I’m dead. My father thinks I’m dead.

      This isn’t just a sheet, it’s a shroud.

      That’s why there’s something hard beneath my head — the Hebrew Bible, maybe, or a prayer book.

      Oh my God! I’m not dead, I’m alive!

      Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me, alone.

      I want to talk, but I can’t. I want to move, but I can’t. I can see, but no one sees me.

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