"She Came from Mariupol" by Natascha Wodin is a poignant and deeply personal memoir that explores themes of identity, memory, and belonging. In this powerful narrative, Wodin delves into her own family history, tracing the life of her mother, who survived the horrors of World War II and its aftermath. At the heart of the book is Wodin's exploration of her mother's journey, from her childhood in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol to her experiences as a forced laborer in Nazi Germany and her struggles to rebuild her life in the aftermath of the war. Wodin paints a vivid and harrowing portrait of the traumas endured by her mother and millions of others during this tumultuous period, while also reflecting on the ways in which these experiences have shaped her own sense of self and identity. In light of the destruction of the city since Wodin's writing, this memoir is particularly timely and haunting.

Newly translated into English, this is the captivating, and oftentimes haunting, memoir of Natascha Wodin’s efforts to discover the history of her family. Born in 1945 in Germany in a camp for “displaced persons”, Natascha would have little opportunity to learn about her mother’s past before her unexpected death when Natascha was just ten years old. All she knew was that her parents left their home in Ukraine in the Nazi forced labor program in 1943. Growing up in Germany as an outsider, Natascha never fully understood her Eastern European roots or the horrors that her mother undoubtedly witnessed. Now, she recounts her journey to rediscovering her past, and the stories of millions of others whose lives were uprooted during World War II.

Published in the April 2022 edition of Appleton Monthly Magazine "Great Reads"

A very sad but educational read setting us up for the events happening in Russia and Ukraine today. She had a tragic childhood anyone would struggle to overcoming losing their mother at such a young age.

Mariupol a Ukrainian city which few people knew before the war is now almost daily in the news because of immense suffering. What a coincidence to review a book with this title. The reader immerses into three narrations, all presented with a delightful and elegant style. The first narrative is when the author, now a young woman in Germany is trying to find the background of her mother's suicide. She discovers layers upon layers of her Ukrainian family tree and brings her relatives to life. The second narration is the immense suffering the people from Mariupol endured from the Bolshevik revolution to the German occupation with Stalin’s terror thrown in. The third level of the narration is the fate and hardship suffered by the forcefully deported workers from the East during the Nazi regime and, even more surprising, even after the war in postwar Germany.
All these topics deserve attention but it is the third topic which is under-represented in German literature.

A compelling and fascinating mixture of biography, memoir, and history, Wodin's book tells of her search to understand her mother, Evgenia Yakovleva Ivashchenko, a Ukrainian forced labourer in Germany, whose life was "shredded" by the Stalinist and Nazi regimes. Over six decades after her mentally ill mother's suicide by drowning in Germany's Regnitz River, Wodin, now in her 70s, plugged Evgenia's name into a Russian internet search engine, something she'd done multiple times before with little to show for it. This time, though, something extraordinary happened. She came upon an Azov Greek forum for those with family links to Mariupol. The online group was run by by an engineer originally from the southern Ukrainian city who now lived in Russia. Konstantin, an indefatigable and passionate investigator, aided Wodin in going back some generations in her mother's family history, allowing her to construct a maternal family tree.

Wodin would learn of her roots in the nobility, the intelligentsia, and the merchant class and how these details factored into two members of her family, her grandfather and her mother's older sister, Lidia, being exiled as enemies of the people. She'd also find an opera singer uncle (a card-carrying Communist Party member), his eccentric physician daughter whose life had been dedicated to his care, and another cousin's murderous son, a bizarre man who'd smothered his own mother. This and other information Wodin stumbled upon was at times deeply unsettling, enough to make her question what she'd gotten herself into.

Wodin's is a richly detailed, gripping book, which is necessarily speculative at times. Wodin observes that the experiences of forced slave labourers from the East, "untermenschen" (non-Aryan, racially inferior people)--many of them Ukrainian and regarded as only slightly superior to Jews--are often marginalia to the Holocaust. This exceptional work made me aware of lives I'd never before considered. It deserves to be widely read.

I am grateful to Michigan State University Press and to Net Galley for providing me with a digital copy for review purposes.

I received a free electronic copy of this excellent historical work, based on research into the lives of the author's family from Netgalley, Natascha Wodin, and Michigan University Press. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work.

This novel takes your mind back, to atrocities of the past - and those same ones we are all experiencing daily on the 6:00 news. I was thankful for the history, bad as it was, and the impact of that past layered onto the present in Ukraine only adds to the anguish of those current victims and the depth of our need to help. This should be required reading in every high school in the world.

There’s an especial poignancy in reading this book right now (March/April 2022) when the Russians have more or less obliterated Mariupol, a city I’d hardly heard of before, the city where the author’s mother came from in more peaceful times, when Mariupol was a thriving multi-cultural place. Her short life turned out to be almost unbelievably agonising when world events turned everything upside down. She committed suicide when Natascha Wodin was just 10 and thus too young to understand what her mother’s life had been. But later on she felt compelled to find out what had happened to her parents, who suffered not only from Stalin’s atrocities in the Ukraine but later from Hitler’s in Germany. It’s a heartrending story, wonderful explored in this moving and compelling memoir, which becomes a tribute not only to her mother but to all displaced Eastern Europeans – and by tragic chance all those who are currently being displaced. An important and deeply moving book.

She Came From Mariupol was a very intense read, especially due to current events. Mariupol is once again destroyed, Ukraine was once again invaded. The weight of this story increases by realizing how History repeats and generational trauma perpetuates.
The book follows the author’s search for her relatives and family history and it is very emotional experiencing with her this journey and finding answers for what I imagine questions she had her whole life. It is a testament to the tragedy of war, how families are torn apart and how damaging it can be to live without history.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this edition!

SHE CAME FROM MARIUPOL

Every now and then you read something that is so magnificent in terms of depth of feeling that it leaves you spent and exhausted. The historical perspective from a personal experience here is astounding in its ability to convey the feelings of people who were there. You feel like you were them. Not just there, but actually them.

She Came From Mariupol starts out very slowly with the author’s internet search into her genealogy, wanting to understand what lead her mother, Evgenia, to commit suicide at the age of 36. From this very dry start consisting of a bare family tree, a couple of black and white photos, an employment card and confused childhood memories, Natascha Wodin recreates a fully alive and painfully beautiful family history.

Born in Mariupol Ukraine in 1920 into a family of Russian aristocracy, Evgenia lived through an extremely turbulent time period. The Russian Revolution and WWI forced her family into a very changed lifestyle.

In the early 1930’s, her mother living in Ukraine suffered through the Holomodor - extreme starvation. Later, Ukraine being torn between Russian and German rule, she went from being a forced laborer in Germany during WWII to becoming a displaced person after the war, living in camps erected for those purposes. Suffering from mental illness and being in an abusive marriage all combined to an increasing sense of despair. As details emerge, the pace and intensity of events become overwhelming and terribly sad.

The historical information in this book exquisitely describes details of the social and political life for a Russian family in the first half of the 20th century in Ukraine and Germany. It is a serious story of horrific proportions, both large and very small. It is not an easy book to read by any measure - The family genealogy alone requires a lot of concentration. The intensity of the subject matter is also always very intense. But it is an important book that well rewards the effort spent.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Natascha Wodin, and the Michigan States University Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I received this book from Netgalley and at the time I wasn't even sure where Mariupol was located. A few weeks later, war breaks at in Ukraine. Russia has invaded and soon I am seeing Mariupol on the news.

There have been a lot of unrest in Ukraine, from invasions, civil war, the Nazis and now Russia. There have been many WWII books written about the Jewish plight, but few about the Slav workers. This book looks at that thru the eyes of Natascha Wodin.

Natascha grew up in a DP (Displaced Person) camp, after WWII. She tells the story of her mother, who committed suicide (not a spoiler, this is told at the beginning of the book) when she was young. Wodin knew nothing of her mother's family history, so in her 70's, she decides to find out what she can. This is her journey into her mother's life. Wodin soon learns all the atrocities her mother suffered throughout her life.

It's a very poignant story. Also, very timely if you consider what Ukraine is going through at this time.

Thanks to Netgalley, Michigan State University and Wodin for the Kindle Version of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I was completely absorbed whole reading this book. I could barely tear myself from it when necessary. It’s a other timely read because the author’s family is centered around Mariupol, Ukraine. She knew just the bare bones about her mother’s story and the book is about jer researching her maternal family. Thanks to an internet angel, Konstantin, she found almost the entire story, in far out of the way places.
She also discovered her father had another family, but was unable to track down any Information.
It’s a riveting read, but very sad and sobering. The last part is about her horrific childhood in Germany and her mother’s death.
Wodin weaves her personal family history within the broader context of the Ukraine, the Soviet Union, WWII, and beyond.

Very interesting, a woman who tries to get knowledge and a sense of who her mother was. A girl from Mariupol, Ukraine. She communicates with others who are in Russia, Germany and Ukraine, some extended family and some historians in the areas. Fascinating stories of very close family and many she has never even knew of. Thank you @NetGalley@MichiganStateUnversityPress@SheCame from Mariupol

I don't know if I can find words to review this book. It isn't just a book. This is memoir, biography and an historical record. It's profound and heartbreaking and at times so appalling I am once again ashamed of parts of the human race. As I think of the people of the Ukraine right now, in 2022, I can not imagine how its' citizens feel and who of them may be thinking back to the days of World War II and the days of recovery afterwards.
Author Natascha Wodin decided to type her mother's name into a search engine. That act in and of itself is telling and so sad. She knew so little about the woman who had brought her into the world and left her at ten years old when she walked into water and drowned herself in Germany.
Natascha eventually found fragments here and there. Her search is described with candor in the first part of the book, "She Came from Mariupol." My draw to even read this was the labor camp connection. For years I read everything possible so I could try to understand the Holocaust. Her parents had been tricked or taken to Germany from the Ukraine to be laborers for the Reich during the war. The author was able to learn about ancestors she wasn't aware of. This part of the book was quite interesting to me. I learned new things, some heart-sickening.
In another part of the journey another memoir of sorts is sent to Natascha and she learns more about her family history. (This certainly got me thinking about my own family and how important it is to record things for the generations I leave behind one day.) The words the author read and shares with us is a portion of world history itself. It's also her very own story, answers to some of her questions.
The concluding chapters describe Natascha's early years. Her life, her mother's struggle to carry on after the laborers were "freed" is extremely hard to read. It is such a heartbreaking beginning of one life and ending of another young life.
To me this is a book of historic value and brings that often-spoken phrase about not letting history repeat itself. Sadly, it does and will.
There is a lot in this book, much to try to understand and soak in. It is a hard read. I am glad I read it and to be sure, I will remember some of my reactions for a long time.
I want to thank the author, her translator, the publisher and NetGalley for my copy of the book.


Anyone struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts may find portions of the book disturbing. It is very sad. There is much better hope for help today. Domestic and child abuse also factor in.

I found this a really tough read. Without the family tree provided at the start, it would have been very difficult to follow as there were a multitude of relations both close and distant. The extensive research that went into this book was tenfold by not just the author but the able and varied sources. Set mostly in Ukraine, drawing in a complex array of other countries with which the family were associated. Once in a while I read biographies, but the backdrop for this particular one rather defeated me. It was clear that even the close family had grown up in differing class structures, suffered untold hardship and loss. The translation is to be commended, capturing the essence. Having read this book, skipping through certain sections, I knew this was not for me. It was just too intense and needed concentration and perseverance.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this advance copy

She Came from Mariupol completely exceeded my expectations. Beautifully written and full of heart, this story of a woman searching for her roots sent me on my own journey to discover mine. Wodin’s search to understand and learn about her mother’s life inspired me to learn more about mine. The story was so well written that once I started, I never wanted to put it down. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

A true story of the author’s family. Difficult to read at times, however very compelling and loaded with history. Bravo!
Many thanks to the author, #nataschawodin, #netgalley, and #michiganstateuniversitypress for the opportunity to read this book filled with historical treasures.

This book was not only eye-opening to the deadly struggles of Ukrainian people in the twentieth-century, but a heartbreaking odyssey of one woman's search for familial meaning. I found the historical and personal journey to be educational and important to better understanding both the purges in Ukraine but the forced labor of Nazi Germany.

To follow a family, specific the author's mother through some of the hardest times of modern humanity was hard but necessary. To see what post-World War 2/Nazi Germany was like for foreigners of the East was new to me and I appreciate learning that the end of the war did not mean the end of fighting for one's life and right as a human.

I did, however, find the book's structure to be exhaustive. To have only four chapters, one being over 100 pages, was a lot to read. I wish it had been broken up so I could fully embrace all the information in a sitting. Overall, this is important read if you want to learn a personal perspective of Ukraine/Russia/Germany area the 1900s.

I liked this book a great deal, it is at once a family saga, filled with suicide, possible incest and heartrending tragedy, and the story of the Ukrainian ordeal under first the bolsheviks and then the nazis.
The writer also sheds light on the fate of forced labourers from all over Europe who were brought to work until they died in the factories of the Third Reich, the post war treatment of whom was a stain on all the Allies' reputations.
Well worth a read.

She Came From Mariupol is a memoir by Natasha Wodin. Her Mother committed sucide when she was 8 and the memoir is an attempt to come to terms with her mother’s demons and her secret life. Wodin was born in a German Displaced Persons camp after WWII, though her family is Russian

The family were once upper class Russian Ukrainians who of course fell from grace after the Revolution. They then had to endure Lenin, Stalin and a horrific famine (the descriptions are harrowing). Then come the Nazi’s and her mother is sent to Germany as a forced laborer.

The book covers an often overlooked aspect of WWII – the citizens of the Nazi conquered countries who were forcibly taken to Germany housed in labor camps and made to work as domestic servants and in the farms and factories under inhuman conditions. Once the War ends they find themselves stranded in German, unable to return to their homeland. They are persona non grata is Germany too, since the Germans have deep hatred and distrust anything and anyone Russian. The family endures miserable conditions in the DP camps and in the housing that the Germans eventually build. Wodin is horribly bullied & beaten both at home and at school.

It’s a story of survival under unimaginable circumstances. My only quibble is that the book needed a bit of editing. A good portion of books early chapters are about her Mother’s very extended family and per-war history.
It’s interesting but I kept wondering when the actual story would begin.

Many thanks for NetGalley for providing an ARC in return for an honest review.

<b>“I had long given up looking for [my mother]. She had been born more than ninety years ago and she only lived for thirty-six years. Not just any years, but the years of the civil war, the purges, and the famines in the Soviet Union, the years of the Second World War and National Socialism. She had been caught in the shredder of two dictatorships, first under Stalin in Ukraine, then under Hitler in Germany. It was an illusion to think that, decades later, I could find a trace of a young woman in the ocean of forgotten victims, about whom I knew little more than her name.”</b>

I don't think I ever read a more touching, breath-taking, fascinating and ultimately deeply sad memoir than this one and I am very happy it has been translated into English so that it can reach a wider audience. Natascha Wodin´s mother killed herself when she was 10 years old, somewhere in the 1950s. Thanks to a search started on the internet she slowly but certainly manages to paint a picture of her mother´s life, first as a girl in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov born into a well-to-do family of exotic Greek and Italian descent, and later as a married woman to Natascha´s father and being deported to Germany for forced labour. She also uncovers the lives of various colourful family members all of them caught up in historical turmoil.

The writing is outstanding, not at all dramatic, letting the incredible facts speak for themselves.