Nadia Konik

A Home Somewhere Nadia Konik

The book is a factual biography of the author's parents. It is a story of the human spirit triumphing through adversity and details the struggle for survival. Helene, uprooted from her home in Latvia when she was only 15 in 1940 and Gregori captured by the Reich army in eastern Ukraine, destined for slave labour in Germany, both endure danger and horror created by the Axis and Allied forces. They meet after the war in Hamburg, marry and emigrate to Australia in 1950 and endure separation during the two year government indenture scheme. It almost destroys their marriage. We follow their gradual assimilation into an Aussie lifestyle in the low socio-economic western suburbs. During the 2021 Covid-19 lock down, Helene is 96 years old, has out lived her husband, 2 of her 3 daughters and begins to break out in fear and torment, reliving the repressive regimes of the war, seemingly returned as "lock down" in a Melbourne nursing home.