by Nicole Yurcaba
If someone asked me “What is the best book of 2023?” I would have to answer “Omer Bartov’s The Butterfly and the Axe.” Of course, my reasons for answering this way are deeply personal, especially in the context of the current war in Ukraine. As a Ukrainian American, and more specifically as a Ukrainian American of Hutsul/Lemko (Carpatho-Rusyn) origin, Bartov’s novel arrived in my life at a uniquely painful moment: I was grappling not only with daily news of destruction in Ukraine, but I was also facing the one-year anniversary of losing my Polish-Ukrainian Jewish partner to untreated mental illness. Firmly forming the plot in The Butterfly and the Axe (Amsterdam Publishers, 2023) are themes of remembering one’s individual and collective history, as well facing and reconciling with the transgenerational trauma which shape one’s individual, yet lifelong, experience.
Narrated by an unnamed historian, The Butterfly and the Axe explores the historical record and familial legacy of those murdered and erased during World War II. Its primary focus is a remote Ukrainian village, where a Jewish family was murdered in 1944. Three generations later, Tali, a young Israeli woman meets Andriy, a British man of Ukrainian origins. Each of them is on a journey to recover their origins and learn the truth about their family members’ involvement in the heinous murder. For Tali, the journey is an attempt to understand her family’s emotional and social complexities, and for Andriy, it is about uncovering the truth about the grandfather he so adored, a grandfather whose supposed truth seems larger than history and fiction combined.
The power of The Butterfly and the Axe is that it does not steer away from Ukraine or Eastern Europe’s rather complex and bloody history with its Jewish population. It is no secret, as TIME explains, that “The truth is, of course, that Ukraine in the 30s and 40s of the twentieth century was a bloodland for Jews.” Bartov’s novel captures the antisemitic sentiment which, fueled by both Soviet and Nazi propaganda, increased swiftly and dramatically among peasant populations. In this portrayal, Bartov effectively captures a strange phenomenon still sweeping the globe by silent storm–the eerie effectiveness of propaganda and disinformation, one that in the contemporary world, thanks to social media, seems to prove more effective than it did during World War II. Swept into the disinformation mayhem is Andriy’s grandfather, whose brushes with the ever-controversial figure Stepan Bandera, forever shape Andriy’s grandfather’s stories which he exuberantly shares with Andriy.
Bandera’s role in Bartov’s novel is not only imperative to the novel itself, but also to the current war in Ukraine. Firmly rooting much of Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine is that it is “de-nazifying” Ukraine, an assertion which, given that Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, leaves many scratching their heads. Another assertion Putin and his officials frequently make is that they are ridding Ukraine of the бандерівець, or “bandеrivets” (“Banderites,” or followers of Bandera). Today, Bandera remains a questionable, yet frequently celebrated, figure in Ukraine. Many Ukrainians revere him as a hero because of his anti-Soviet independence movement, despite the murderous campaigns he and his followers carried out against Poles and Jews.
It is these campaigns in which Andriy’s grandfather supposedly fought, a factoid which complicates his relationship with Tali. As Tali explores the rural villages of Western Ukraine where her family’s history and tragedy took place, she grows more and more conflicted about her relationship with Andriy because of her upbringing. She states, “‘I was raised to think about Ukrainians as murderers…People around me, and probably around you too, always said that the Ukrainians were worse than the Germans; that they slaughtered and tortured people, including their own neighbors, people they had lived next door to for generations.’” The antithesis of this stereotype of Ukrainians emerges in a unique character carefully woven into the novel–that of Dmytro, the Hutsul.
Dmytro is a fascinating character because his Hutsul identity seemingly differs from the general Ukrainian one portrayed in the novel. The Hutsuls, and more broadly the Carpatho-Rusyns (note: The Hutsuls are considered an ethnic group of the Carpatho-Rusyns, along with Lemkos and Boykos), have experienced their own complex relationship with Ukraine and its policies. Rusyns have been described as Ukraine’s forgotten minority, who, historically, also experienced deportation (the most culturally crippling being that of Operation Vistula) and censorship of their culture. When Dmytro arrives in the village prior to the massacre, he emphasizes that the Hutsuls are different in that the Hutsuls coexisted with the Jews. He says,“‘ We Hutsuls are not like that…’we don’t care who your mother was and who you pray to as long as you work hard and are honest.’” When rumors circulate that Dmytro is hiding Jews, people describe him as “cunning” and assume “he is making a fortune from the Jews he is hiding.” They do not recognize that it is perhaps Dmytro’s otherness as a Hutsul, as well as genuine and decent human compassion, which leads him to protect a Jewish family.
It is through Dmytro’s character, as well as Tali and Andriy’s ability to reconcile their own pasts and cultural differences, that the novel develops the themes of interconnectedness and the necessity for remembering. As the book concludes, readers discover a substantial paragraph bearing words which readers should carry with them: “We cannot let them die as if they just vanished into thin air. Their deaths were not a puff of smoke, a mysteriously heavenly act, a stroke of bad luck; the earth did not open up and swallow them.” Thus, the act of remembering is of particular importance, especially in the context of the current war in Ukraine, where many remember that several decades ago the world said “Never again.” As Bartov’s unnamed narrator states, “The world had turned around again, and once more, millions of people were losing their homes, entire cities were in ruins.” A war, and what many perceive as a genocide, is happening again.
The Butterfly and the Axe is the kind of novel which begs for a second, even a third, reading. It arrives at a critical point in not only the war in Ukraine’s ever-changing situation but also in history, where human rights violations, including antisemitism, are on the rise, even in democratic societies. Immediate and necessary, Bartov’s novel is a bold reminder that we, both as citizens and readers, can choose to be the oppressor or a character like Dmytro, driven by compassion and concern for their fellow human beings.
Nicole Yurcaba (Ukrainian: Нікола Юрцаба–Nikola Yurtsaba) is a Ukrainian (Hutsul/Lemko) American poet and essayist. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Whiskey Island, Raven Chronicles, West Trade Review, Appalachian Heritage, North of Oxford, and many other online and print journals. Nicole teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University and is a guest book reviewer for Sage Cigarettes, Tupelo Quarterly, Colorado Review, and The Southern Review of Books.
