🎤︎︎ New Five Books Episode: Sasha Vasilyuk on the Silences of the Soviet Jewish Past

In this episode, Sasha reflects on her childhood in Russia and Ukraine, including the moment she discovered her family was Jewish at a Purim celebration. Cut off from much of the Soviet Jewish experience under communism, Sasha also shares what she is reading to bridge the gap and learn more about the hidden narratives of Soviet Jews. We discuss what Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing taught her about slavery’s impact on American history and life today, what it means to contribute a “missing puzzle piece” to WWII literature, and how witnessing the present Russia-Ukraine conflict emboldened her to tell her grandfather’s story.

Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in Ukraine, 2007, days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.

In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between the Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler's forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined-and even when the war ends, his fight isn't over. He must conceal his choices from the KGB and from his family.

Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of the debut novel Your Presence Is Mandatory (Bloomsbury, 2024), winner of the California Book Award and the Sami Rohr Prize. Her nonfiction has been published in The New York Times, CNN, Harper’s Bazaar, Time, The Telegraph, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Sasha grew up between Ukraine and Russia before immigrating to the United States at the age of 13.

1. ⁠An Airplane Went Flying by Friedrich Gorenshteyn (in Russian)

2. ⁠Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

3. ⁠Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

4. ⁠In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union translated by Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav

5. ⁠Your Presence is Mandatory by Sasha Vasilyuk

Other Episodes Featuring Unique WWII Perspectives:

• Sharon Kurtzman on the Danger that Lingered Post Holocaust

• Mary Morris on Hidden Histories and Jewish Identities

• Georgia Hunter on Discovering Her Family’s Jewish History and Kindness and Resistance

• Bonny Reichert on Food, Fear, and Finding Beauty

  What Else We’re Reading Now:

Remember to Eat is a quietly powerful collection that traces a Jewish mother and daughter across decades, capturing the ache, humor, and moral complexity of family life and womanhood in a changing world.

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