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What does it mean to be exiled? For the landmarks of your past to disappear?
Join Shelf Life Books and for a special in-store reading with the Polish Canadian Heritage Day keynote speaker, Marsha Faubert. For the evening, Faubert will read from her new book Wanda’s War: An Untold Story of Nazi Europe, Forced Labour, and a Canadian Immigration Scandal (Goose lane Editions 2023), followed by a Q&A period.
Grab a copy of Wanda’s War here: http://surl.li/hivzz
This is a free event & all are welcome.
Masks are not mandatory, but encouraged!
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1943, Wanda Gizmunt was ripped from her family home in Poland and deported to a forced labour camp in Nazi Germany. At the end of the war, she became one of millions of displaced Europeans awaiting resettlement.
Unwilling to return to then-Soviet-occupied Poland, Wanda became one of 100 young Polish women brought to Canada in 1947 to address a labour shortage at a Quebec textile mill. But rather than arriving to long-awaited freedom, the women found themselves captives to their Canadian employer. Their treatment eventually became a national controversy, prompting scrutiny of Canada’s utilitarian immigration policy.
Wanda seized the opportunity to leave the mill in the midst of a strike in 1948. She never looked back, but she remained silent about her wartime experience. Only after her death did her daughter-in-law assemble the pieces of Wanda’s life in Poland, Nazi Germany, and finally, Canada. In this masterful account of a hidden episode of history, Faubert chronicles the tragedy of exile and the meaning of silence for those whose traumas were never fully recognized.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marsha Faubert is a lawyer and writer of narrative nonfiction. She began her legal career as a litigator, and later worked in various roles in the administrative justice system in Ontario. Originally from Sarnia, Ontario, she now lives in Toronto. Wanda’s War is her first book.
Visit her website here: https://www.marshafaubert.ca/
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