Eighty years ago, on Jan. 27, 1945, the surviving prisoners of Auschwitz were liberated and the full horror of the Nazi regime was exposed to the world.
A new historical novel by Chemainus author Robyn Gerland brings to life the harrowing journey of Hanka Mittelstaedt, who escaped Nazi-occupied Warsaw as a child.
Thursday’s Child is based on extensive interviews with Mittelstaedt, who was also a resident of Chemainus and passed away in 2023. Mittelstaedt fled Poland during the Second World War with her mother.
She was just five years old in 1939 when German forces invaded her country. “Before I understood the words Auschwitz and Holocaust,” Mittelstaedt recounts in the novel.
Their journey took them across war-ravaged Europe, culminating in a tense moment at the Swiss border in 1945 after six years of hardship.
“There! In the distance, flew a bright red flag with the large white Swiss cross in the centre,” Mittelstaedt said in the book. “I had expected a great, cement barrier perhaps with giant padlocks, but here we finally stood faced with a flimsy piece of wood no greater than one of the two-by-sixes that had created fences around some Warsaw homes in an earlier time. And more surprising and certainly more upsetting, just as we arrived, that barrier groaned into action and began a slow, tantalizing downward drop.”
Gerland, an award-winning author and editor, has written three other novels and a book of short stories, all available through the Vancouver Island Regional Library and other libraries across Canada. She has taught creative writing at Conestoga College in Ontario and Vancouver Island University. Her work has been featured by the Federation of BC Writers and frequently appears in Chicken Soup for the Soul collections.
With Thursday’s Child, Gerland continues her tradition of historical storytelling rooted in deep research and personal accounts.
The novel offers a poignant exploration of survival, resilience and the human cost of war and is available for purchase through Barleywick Publishing by contacting bythebeach@shaw.ca or calling 250-324-3507.
