Victor, a Soldier's Story

A graphic memoir of the epic true story behind one soldier's survival in the deadliest theater of World War IIVictor Torkanovsky, a Jewish university student with poor eyesight, enlists in the Red Army when Germany invades the USSR during World War II. Briefly assigned to the secret police during the Siege of Leningrad, he nearly starves as the city's food supply is cut off. He then fights in the Battle of Stalingrad as an ordinary soldier and survives harrowing encounters with German troops and a Soviet military tribunal before discovering the ruins of his ancestral home in Ukraine during the liberation of Kyiv. In the Soviet Union, Victor did not talk about his wartime experiences because they challenged official accounts. Toward the end of his life, he shared them with his grandchildren. They worked with award-winning illustrator Igor Karash to illuminate this story of courage, hardship, luck, and moral compromise--one that encapsulates the experiences of Soviet soldiers and civilians, millions of whom did not survive to see Hitler defeated or Stalin dead.