Awards

• Commended for Moonbeam Children's Book Award (Nonfiction-Young Adult) 2009

Overview

Ann Szedlecki was a Hollywood film-loving fourteen-year-old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and she went to the Soviet Union with her older brother, hoping to return for the rest of her family later. Instead, she ends up spending most of the next six and a half years alone in the Soviet Union, enduring the harsh conditions of northern Siberia under Stalin's Communist regime. Szedlecki's beautifully written story, which lovingly re-constructs her pre-war childhood in Lodz, is also compelling for its candour about her experiences as a woman in the Soviet Union during World War II. As a very young woman without family, living largely by her wits, she is only too aware of her own vulnerability and meets every challenge she faces with a fierce determination to survive. Throughout her ordeals she hears the echo of her mother's last words to her: Be decent.

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9781897470107

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Ann Szedlecki was born Chana Fraijlich in Lodz, Poland in 1925. After spending the war in the Soviet Union, she returned to Lodz to find that every member of her family had perished. In 1950, she met and married Abraham Szedlecki. They emigrated first to Israel and then, in 1953, to Toronto, where their daughter, Lynda, was born. Ann worked in the garment district, but eventually opened her own successful ladies' clothing store, which she operated for twenty-five years. She became an avid community volunteer, discovering her natural talent as a storyteller. Ann Szedlecki passed away in 2005.

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