Kiev, Lviv, 1941, State Publishing House of National Minorities of the USSR, pp. 64, form 17 x 13, cloth hardcover, slightly soiled and faded. Drawings by V. Shcheglov. Publisher's note and price in Russian. The book was managed to be published in the territory occupied by the USSR, a few days before the German attack on Russia on June 22, 1941. It is a unique edition.
In the book, a family living in the countryside is forced to leave a poor farm and move to Krakow. The mother works beyond her strength, trying to provide for her three children. Seeing the mother's efforts, the older son wants to help her. He searches for a long time for a job that could bring him as such an income, finally managing to find employment at a construction site. Working up a sweat, the 13-year-old supports his mother's declining health. Apparently, Vasilevskaya consulted her second husband, bricklayer Marian Bogatko, for this piece. This unfortunate spouse supposedly objected to his wife's cooperation with the communists, so NKVD officers treated him with a shot to the head. After her husband's tragic death, her unhealthy attraction to a country ruled by Stalin took forms that were hardly acceptable even to members of Polish leftist groups and artists who laid the foundations of Socialist Realism....
