The Man from Talalaivka: A Tale of Love, Life and Loss from Ukraine

When Peter forged travel documents during Stalin's formidable reign to see his parents in a Siberian labour camp before they perished, he knew he was facing the life-or-death challenge of his life. What followed in the years after that journey could not have been foreseen by Peter or his countrymen. In 1941, the Ukraine was invaded by Hitler's army and remained under its control until its retreat two years later, taking Peter and his young family with them, as workers in Germany's labour camps where he has to draw on every ounce of his being to keep his family alive. After years of hardship and suffering, a hand of hope is offered in the form of a ship that would take Peter and his family, now displaced persons, with no country they could claim as their own, as far away from Stalin's Soviet Union as possible: to Australia, a land of opportunity and fairness before the law. Based on a true story, The Man from Talalaivka is both a political and personal story. But above... The Man from Talalaivka is the gripping story of a man torn between love for his country and the harsh reality of totalitarian rule... The story of a man forced to change countries through the battles of two totalitarian tyrants... In an idyllic Kylapchin village, 200 kilometres north-east of Kiev, in Ukraine's Sumskaya Oblast, a young man's life was overturned by the brutality of the Stalinist regime. It was 1929: Lenin had died five years earlier, his followers gradually scattering or succumbing to Secretary General Stalin's ruthless will. Upheaval took on a sinister new dimension as 'collectivisation' of farms was enforced throughout Stalin's new Russian empire; no greater effects of which were felt than by Peter and his family, along with millions of others in the Ukraine. Stalin's goal-to break and destroy the independence of Ukrainian farmers-did ultimately succeed. But at massive cost. Most were herded to 'collective farms', or kolkhozes. Others-like Peter's parents Yosef and Palasha-were gaoled on pretext of being 'kulaks' (wealthy farmers), then sentenced to five years' imprisonment in a Siberian labour camp. It was a one-way ticket to a slow death. Peter risked his life-and perhaps even the safety of his young family-and did the unthinkable: he forged travel documents and journeyed to the Siberian snow-bound prison camp in which his parents were incarcerated. The journey, and his capture by NKVD agents, almost cost him his life. Miraculously, he returned, changed by the haunting experience...