The Silent Unseen and Underground Soldiers: Polish–Ukrainian Conflicts and Collaboration in Amanda McCrina’s Second World War Fiction

The memory of the Second World War remains a bone of contention between Poland and Ukraine. The countries’ mnemonic discourses differ significantly, especially regarding the legacy of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Most local children’s and young adult authors avoid discussing historical nuances and offer their readers simple narratives about victims and oppressors. Thus, it is remarkable that in the last few years descriptions of the difficult Polish–Ukrainian relations have appeared in fiction written by Anglophone authors. This article considers the representations of the complex Ukrainian–Polish/Polish–Ukrainian dynamics in Amanda McCrina’s Traitor (2020) and The Silent Unseen (2022), two young adult novels set in Second World War eastern Poland/western Ukraine. McCrina, an American of Polish descent, introduces teenage protagonists with liminal identities and agency limited by their historical circumstances. This article underscores the importance of McCrina’s literary techniques – especially her use of alternation of perspectives – that highlight the complexity of history and challenge the discourse of morality typical of young adult historical fiction. Moreover, it argues that the minor simplifications introduced by McCrina are necessary for Anglophone young readers to grasp the entanglements of the history of what Timothy Snyder termed the ‘Bloodlands’. Thus, her approach to addressing multifaceted and problematic topics exceeds morality plots based on the victim–oppressor binary.