to get hold of:
Marek Lange
Born: 1923 Place of birth: Litva, Poland Father: Stanislau Lange Mother: Kristina Lange
Arrived in UK 1943. Joined Polish Free Forces Marital history: married 1955, divorced, 1961. Ex-wife died, 1963
Children: Katya Lange, born 1959
He tapped his fingers on the desk. There was plenty of material relating to Lange’s interests after his arrival in the UK, the period he wanted for the article. Jake would have no problems writing a gung-ho profile of a man who’d acquitted himself bravely in the last years of the war and had worked hard and successfully afterwards. But his life before 1943 was frustratingly vague. And this part of Lange’s story might tie in very well with the new book Jake had embarked on shortly after his first meeting with Juris Ziverts.
Ziverts’ dilemma had opened Jakes eyes to the other refugees, those who had arrived quietly, camouflaged among the thousands who were trying to escape the chaos of Europe and rebuild their shattered lives, those whose papers were in suspiciously good order, and who talked little about their past. These were the people with something to hide and it was their stories that Jake wanted.
Eastern Europe had suffered under the sway of two ideologies: Stalinism and fascism. The storm that had erupted when the two systems collided had been terrifying in its intensity and its brutality. Thirteen million people had died in the war years alone. The millions who had died under Stalin had never been accurately counted, and the majority of the perpetrators had never been brought to book.
Jake didn’t want to write about the lost chance for justice–victors’ justice, many would have said. He wanted to tell the story of the human cost. His work had given him access to the people who had lived with the Soviet behemoth to the east and the rising darkness of fascism to the west. He needed a hook on which to hang his story, and Juris Ziverts had led him to it: the story of Minsk.
Minsk, a city with a history going back to medieval times, had suffered the worst that both regimes could offer. North of the city, on its outskirts, was the Kurapaty Forest, where 900,000 people had been systematically slaughtered by Stalin’s soldiers. And the city itself had been devastated by the Nazi occupation. By the time the Nazis were driven out, a quarter of the population was dead.
Belarus, or Byelorussia, or Belarussia–it was a country with more names than a fugitive. He’d dug around a bit. And he had unearthed a Belarusian émigré living in Manchester. Sophia Yevanova was an invalid who had been housebound for several years. He’d gone to see her with no great expectations. What could an ailing babushka have to tell him? But he had come away from their first meeting captivated and enthralled, as had, he suspected, every man who had crossed Sophia Yevanova’s path for most of her seventy-five years.
Illness confined her to her room in the spacious old house she shared with her son, the eminent historian, Antoni Yevanov. She was sharp, she was witty, she was unnerving and she was beautiful, and she had woven stories for him that had captivated him for far longer than the hour he had assigned to the meeting. She was from Minsk, and had lived through what may have been one of the most horrific occupations of the 1939-45 war.
At thirteen, she had endured Stalin’s terror. At fourteen she had joined the partisans fighting against Hitler’s armies. She had ended her war in a concentration camp, but she had survived. And she had made it to England to give birth to her son, the child of her partisan lover who had died in the camps. Jake wanted to tell her story. He wanted to tell the story of the city that she had described with such passion and such regret–the sweep of history focused through the eyes of one woman.
Her son, Antoni Yevanov, was a recent catch for the city’s university. It was the articles heralding his arrival that had first drawn Jake’s attention to Sophia Yevanova. Yevanov, an expert in international law, had been involved in setting up the war crimes hearings at The Hague. What the mother had experienced in one era, the son was trying to redress in another.
Jake opened his work file and scanned the draft of the chapter he’d been working on the evening before, before Cass’s arrival had interrupted him: The allegiances of the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) in the Second World War are not as straightforward as those of the western European alliances. The Soviet occupation of these countries was harsh and repressive. The Nazi invasion of 1941 was seen initially as a liberation. This was a major factor behind Baltic collaboration in Nazi atrocities against civilians.
His phone rang. He tucked the handset under his chin, and went on reading. ‘Jake Denbigh.’
The notorious 12th battalion of the Lithuanian police carried out massacres of civilians…
‘Mr Denbigh, this is Katya Lange.’
Marek Lange’s daughter. Jake had a good idea what this was going to be about. ‘How can I help you, Ms Lange?’
…in the Ukraine and Belarus, including massacres in the Pripyet Marshes, Mir, Slutsk, Baranoviche and, notoriously, Minsk.
‘I understand you’re interviewing my father this morning.’
‘That’s correct,’ Jake said. He deleted ‘notoriously’ and moved on to the next paragraph.
Sadly, they were assisted in many cases by members of the local police forces.
‘I thought I made it clear…’ He heard her intake of breath. ‘My father isn’t well,’ she said abruptly. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea.’
He sighed, and gave her his full attention. ‘It’s just an interview, Ms Lange.’
‘About what, exactly?’
‘It’s about the experience of being an immigrant.’ He’d already told her this.
‘He had a bad time in the war,’ she said. ‘Before he escaped. He doesn’t like to talk about it.’
‘My remit is immigration,’ he said. ‘I’m interested in what happened to him after he reached the UK.’ He clicked open his research notes on Marek Lange and scrolled the list of dead ends he’d encountered while trying to establish what Lange had been doing in occupied Eastern Europe in the years leading up to his escape:
No record Litva–check spelling
Only reference: Litva–Grand Duchy of Medieval Belarus and Lithuania.
No record of Lange family as per your profile–NB records incomplete–war damage.
…cannot trace…
…no record…
‘Well, I’m not happy. I’ve asked my daughter to sit in on the interview. I don’t want you to begin until she is there.’
‘Okay, your daughter will be there. Thank you for letting me know.’ He hung up. Forewarned is forearmed. His appointment with Lange was for eleven. It looked like he’d better get there a bit early.
The Snow Child
This is the story of how Eva was born.
Once upon a time, there was a forest, with birch trees that were bare in the
