There is much to admire and appreciate in Trapped in Hitler’s Web. And as Maria, herself, notes, over time, she (and we as readers) risks empathizing with some of those who show her kindness, notwithstanding their cruelty at other times. As she observes the maltreatment and abuse of others worse off than she, Maria realizes that, as bad as her situation is, she is relatively safe and secure, something she dwells upon frequently with guilt when she thinks of the others. Maria, separated from her family and from Nathan, clings to the hope that somehow they will all survive the war and be reunited.
Much of the novel then takes place on the farm as Maria adjusts to life under the Reich as a “subhuman” working in slave-like conditions as she tries to navigate the different challenges and threats embodied in the people she meets-from Frau Huber, who runs the farm Sophie, her Nazi-indoctrinated daughter to the sadistic Blockleiter who unexpectedly appears to scrutinize and punish both the workers and the farmers. While Maria ends up on a farm outside of Innsbruck, Nathan is sent to a work crew outside of Salzburg. They are loaded onto packed train cars headed to Austria. With Nathan’s fake ID, the pair naively sign up. They see ads posted seeking farm workers. When Trapped in Hitler’s Web begins in the fall of 1942, Maria and Nathan believe they cannot last much longer in the woods and are looking for an escape to safety. When they can no longer be of help, Maria and Nathan escape to the woods where they hide out amongst a group of resistance fighters working against both the Nazis and the Soviets.
In that first book (whose focus is on Maria’s sister, Krystia), Maria and her family have assisted a Jewish family, including Maria’s friend Nathan, with whom they are friends. It is a sequel of sorts to Skrypuch’s Don’t Tell the Nazis (previous title Don’t Tell the Enemy>). Trapped in Hitler’s Web is the story of Maria, a Ukrainian girl caught in the horror of World War II.
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