In 1943, Wanda Gizmunt was ripped from her family home in Poland and deported to a forced labour camp in Nazi Germany. At the end of the war, she became one of millions of displaced Europeans awaiting resettlement. Unwilling to return to then-Soviet-occupied Poland, Wanda became one of 100 young Polish women brought to Canada in 1947 to address a labour shortage at a Quebec textile mill. But rather than arriving to long-awaited freedom, the women found themselves captives to their Canadian employer. Their treatment eventually became a national controversy, prompting scrutiny of Canada's utilitarian immigration policy. Wanda seized the opportunity to leave the mill in the midst of a strike in 1948. She never looked back, but she remained silent about her wartime experience. Only after her death did her daughter-in-law assemble the pieces of Wanda's life in Poland, Nazi Germany, and finally, Canada. In this masterful account of a hidden episode of history, Faubert chronicles the tragedy of exile and the meaning of silence for those whose traumas were never fully recognized.
Record details
ISBN:9781773102757 (pbk.)
Physical Description:254 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cm print
Publisher:Fredericton, New Brunswick : Goose Lane Editions, [2023]
1. Borderlands -- 2. The Gulag -- 3. War and amnesty -- 4. Ostarbeiter in Germany -- 5. Displaced -- 6. Enemies and allies -- 7. The wild place -- 8. The reckoning, part I -- 9. Winds of change -- 10. One hundred girls and a scandal -- 11. Free but not free -- 12. Journey's end -- 13. Silence, memory -- 14. The reckoning, part II.