My Grandmother Was Kidnapped. True Story.

Dear Reader, 📚

Researching a story can take you into some strange and unexpected places.

Fly the Heartstream is a time travel tale blending history and magic that moves across decades and centuries, so I’ve channeled my inner historian to help me craft an enriching story. And I’ve learned some interesting stuff along the way.

Diner lingo for a burger with lettuce, tomato, and onion? Walk a cow through the garden.

What did settlers on the American frontier use to cook? Buffalo poop, which was just about everywhere; there weren’t a lot of trees.

But lately, Fly the Heartstream has been illuminated by something closer to home and far more sinister: Nazis.

Specifically, the story my grandmother told me long ago in the easy heat of a Florida morning, thousands of miles and decades away from the Third Reich.

This is her tale, as she related it to me—or at least the beginning of it.

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Maria's Tale

World War II. Circa 1942. Dovhe, a small village in Western Ukraine, close to the Polish border.

“Do not take the roads. Go through the fields. The Germans are out,” my great-grandmother warned her children, Maria and Michael. Then, less sternly and with pride, she said, “My children, you are both so beautiful. Come home before nightfall.”

The parents in the village had agreed – their children would go to the party in the next village together, and they would stay off the roads. And with that, my grandmother, Maria, and her older brother, Michael, left their little house in their poor, rural village and started walking down the dirt road.

Maria was a petite, pretty young girl wearing pigtails and dressed in her best homemade clothes, adorned with traditional vyshyvanka, embroidery on the neck, cuffs, and hem of her dress. They carried baskets for the party filled with sweet babka bread, potato dumplings, and strong cheeses.

Friends emerged from other homes – modest huts with thatched roofs – as Maria and Michael walked, joining them one by one. Soon, there were seven or eight kids, none older than sixteen, chattering away in a happy group.

Initially, the Nazis convinced many Ukrainians that they were liberators. After enduring the Holodomor in the early 1930s—a devastating famine caused by Russian policies that claimed millions of Ukrainian lives—and enduring centuries of Russian oppression, many Ukrainians were eager to defeat Russia once and for all. But lately, there had been grumblings of discontent among the villagers. Rumors of disappearances. Forced labor. Talk of secret murders.

At the edge of the village, the children turned into the wheat fields, taking the paths and backways they knew so well. The party was only a couple of miles away, no more than a pleasant walk of an hour through the rolling steppes, the golden wheat fields, the woodsy patches of sparse forest, and the Carpathian Mountains towering behind them. They were nearing the next village, their minds set on the party, the food, the music, who would be there, who had a crush on whom.

Normal kid stuff.

A hard-faced German soldier, rifle in hand, stepped out of the wheat, blocking their way forward.

“Run!” Michael screamed.

The soldier bellowed something in German, raising his rifle, but the children scattered, dropping their baskets, fleeing every which way. Maria ran as fast as she could, ran like the wind.

The Germans had wised up to the villagers avoiding the roads, and they had quotas to fill. They were forcing able-bodied men, young and old, into their ranks to help fight the Soviets or work in camps to support their war effort.

Slave labor.

Maria fled, but she was small, and soon, a hand rammed her in the back, shoving her down into the dirt. Shrieking, she was dragged out of the field and onto the road.

A large truck idled nearby. More German soldiers milled around it, all heavily armed, guarding a load of grim Ukrainian men who had been crammed in beneath the dark canvas covering the bed.

Into the truck, Maria went, forced at gunpoint. Her fear was electric. She was the only girl. She was fourteen.

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“I’m just a girl! Please let me go!” Maria begged.

“Schau mich nicht an! Schau auf den Boden!” one of them screamed at her. Do not look at me! Look at the floor!

A German soldier brandished his pistol. Maria locked eyes with a Ukrainian prisoner across from her, who shook his hard head just once. “Be quiet. Do as they say,” he seemed to be telling her. Maria realized the soldier wouldn’t think twice about shooting her.

The truck bumped and shook down the rutted roads, and she couldn’t say how long she was in there. It was all a haze of fear, a cold wash of terror spilling through her body. She shut her eyes and silently prayed.

Eventually, the truck stopped, and the Germans hustled the prisoners out. Maria was horrified to see where she was: the train station. It was mobbed with Nazis, car after car being loaded with supplies: bushels of wheat, farm equipment, tools … and men. So many men. Soldiers milled about everywhere, behind them, on top of the train, riding back and forth in vehicles, and even a few on horseback.

The soldiers shoved her toward an open railcar at gunpoint, the Germans screaming at them to move faster, hurry, the train itself stretching on and on down the tracks. The railcar was already filled with people.

The Germans were efficient. They loaded the prisoners quickly and then rolled the railcar door shut. Chains rattled outside as the Germans locked them in, just a few slivers of light pouring through the gaps in the heavy doors.

Some of the men were openly weeping. Others looked shocked, their eyes vacant. It stank of urine and manure, for this railcar had recently carried livestock. It was a transport car devoid of even the most basic luxuries.

The prisoners were packed in tight, with barely room to sit down. Most had to stand. Faceless people whispered in the shadows, and voices hissed from unseen corners.

“Where are they taking us?”

“I heard there are death camps.”

“That’s just a rumor.”

“They need workers, so we’ll be all right. We’re not Jews.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’re still untermenschen. Sub-human.”

“You’re a fool! The Germans are our friends.”

“Then why are we in here?”

“No one comes back. No one ever comes back.”

This was too much for Maria, and she started to sob. Her knees went weak, and she collapsed to the floor. Soon, a stranger took her arm, lifting her gently but firmly. He was much older than Maria.

“It’s okay. You’ll be all right. I’m here for you. Tell me, what’s your name?” he asked.

The stranger talked kindly to Maria, calming her down by asking her where she was from, who her people were, and who she knew. The stranger didn’t know her family directly, but he’d heard of them; he was a farmer, too. The villages in the area were small, and the families in and around them were a close-knit community.

“You’ll be okay, Maria. I’ll help you.” He took her by the hand in a fatherly way.

The train whistle screamed, the train lurched, and then it started chugging slowly down the tracks, gaining momentum. 

Suddenly, there was a commotion in the shadows among the men near one of the railcar doors. Excitement and shouting. The crack of wood.

“PULL!” a voice boomed, and men shouldered to the door, ten or twelve or more. Somehow, someone had found a way to wrench the door open a little bit.

Hope!

The men slipped their fingers into the gap, grabbing for any grip they could find on the door and, in a series of grunting and shouting, jerked the door back and forth, walking it violently on its rollers. The train went faster now. The men roared. The train door broke, sliding open so suddenly that several men toppled back to the floor.

Sunlight poured in—a glimpse of freedom. A man jumped, tumbling end over end down the grassy embankment. That was all it took. Others followed, leaping out even as the train picked up speed. Five, ten! More!

Bullets rained down from atop the train – German sharpshooters picking off the prisoners as they ran for forest and field. Men were shot in their backs, legs, and heads. There was blood and death and train smoke and screaming, audible even over the grinding behemoth of the train.

“Hold my hand, Maria. We’ll jump together,” the stranger said.

“I can’t! I’m too scared!”

“We must! Come on! Before it’s too late!”

The gunshots rang out. Maria saw her countrymen crumpling, blood and flesh flying from their bodies, their skulls shattering.

Maria yanked her hand from his. “I can’t!”

“May God be with you, Maria.”

The stranger jumped without her, tumbling down the embankment. The train tracks curved away, and Maria lost sight of him.

The Ukrainian countryside whipped by faster and faster, and soon, no one else jumped. Those willing to risk German wrath had done so. The rest of the prisoners, those like Maria, were taken into the dark heart of Germany.

She sank to the floor and prayed.

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What happened next? Far too much to recount here, but I can tell you that the stranger who calmed my grandmother did escape. He returned home to his village and immediately visited my great-grandparents to tell them what had happened. If not for him, Maria might’ve been forever lost to them.

The way my grandmother recounted her ordeal so matter-of-factly that morning has always resonated with me.

Years later, I find myself thinking about her experiences, how she witnessed a darkness that nearly engulfed humanity and changed the course of human history forever, and how these same impulses are rising once again in American society and across the world.

Intolerance. Hatred.

The arrogance of believing one’s point of view is infallible.

Argument rather than conversation.

And I wonder, is history about to repeat itself?

More importantly, will we let it?

-Adrian Vladimir