Treffen Tuesday

April – Lena Wolf, “A graphic novel ‘May the Universe be Your Home!’ about the fate of German families in the Soviet Union”

Presentation:

In her presentation Lena will show the coloured pages from her upcoming graphic novel, which hopefully will be available by the end of 2023. Those of you fortunate to attend the 2022 Treffen Tuesday presentation will recall the story of the deportation and how Lena learned of her heritage. This is a continuation of that family history.

Attached below is a page from her graphic novel which depicts German speaking people leaving Russia for North-and South America. Lena’s family stayed behind in the Soviet Union and the graphic novel is their story.

Biography:

Lena Wolf was born in Latvia and grew up in Kazakhstan and later in Germany. Her parents are Germans from the Russian Empire.

Her grandparents along with her parents, who were very young, were deported from German-speaking villages in Ukraine to Kazakhstan in 1941. They were put into special settlements and had to live there until December 1955, 10 years after the end of WWII. They had no rights and were not allowed to leave the special settlements. Leaving their settlement resulted in severe punishment, up to execution.

Escaping the special settlement is exactly what Lena’s grandma Josephine did. Josephine wanted to go back to her village in Ukraine. She took her young son Adam with her, Lena’s father. They were arrested and Josephine was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor in the Gulag, Vorkuta, located 150 km north of the artic circle. Lena’s father was sent to a Ukrainian orphanage.

This is just one of the stories that made Lena want to write the graphic novel about the Germans from Russia, people who stayed behind in the Soviet Union. She wants the world to know what happened to our people.