PREPARING PIDPENKY FOR the winter was a time and space-consuming affair. Kat's father had already lit a fire in the wood stove and it had burnt down to a steady dry heat. A few years ago, he had perfected a contraption for drying the pidpenky.
Orysia opened her daughter's bag and grinned with delight. "These look excellent, Kataryna!"
"They're exceptional this year," agreed Kat. She opened her grandfather's bag and let some of his mushrooms tumble gently out onto the utility table in the summer kitchen.
It was essential that the mushrooms be processed immediately because if they sat at all, they would go slimy. And they couldn't be washed with water for the same reason. Each one had to be carefully dried and brushed. Kat was tired, but that didn't stop her from grabbing dishtowels and mushroom brushes from the kitchen and pitching in. She and her parents set up a mini factory line to process the mushrooms. Kat blotted one mushroom dry at a time and then handed it to her mother, who would gently whisk away every last remnant of dirt with a small brush. Orysia would then hand the mushroom to Walt, who would break off the stem and set it aside, then thinly slice the cap. The dehydrating contraption he'd come up with consisted of five individual pieces of screen door mesh that had each been framed with wood. He had already covered the first mesh screen with a layer of cheesecloth, and so as each mushroom cap was sliced, he placed the slices side by side on the cheesecloth. When a whole layer was done, cheesecloth would be laid on top and then another mesh frame placed on top.
The warmth from the stove made the summer kitchen a cozy place to work, and Kat delighted in working together with her parents this way. With Danylo asleep, it also gave her the opportunity to talk with her parents about some things that had been on her mind.
"Have either of you read that file Mr. Vincent left?" Kat asked.
Walt nodded, and Orysia answered, "We read it this morning."
Kat reached for another mushroom and carefully blotted every part of it. "What did it say?"
"It was basically a summary of why the issue of Nazi war crimes became hot after 50 years of silence," said Orysia.
"So why did it?" asked Kat.
Walt stopped his slicing for a moment and looked up at his daughter. "You were just a baby when all this happened," he said. "An MP got up in the House of Commons in 1985 and claimed that Joseph Mengele had applied to immigrate to Canada in 1962 and that the government knew his identity at the time but hadn't done anything about it. More than that, some people claimed that Mengele might still be living in Canada."
Kat knew who Joseph Mengele was. He had been one of the most cruel and brutal Nazis of all. As a doctor, he should have been healing the sick, but instead he used his medical skills to do dreadful experiments on humans. The pain and suffering he had caused was infamous. "You're kidding," she said. "How could that have happened?"
"Well, it didn't," replied her mother. "It was an unfounded rumour. Mengele died in South America in 1979 and there is no evidence that he ever tried to enter Canada."
"What's that got to do with this file then?" asked Kat, more confused than when the conversation started.
"The government didn't know it was just a rumour at the time. They decided to set up a commission to investigate and report to the government," explained Orysia. "Also, there were allegations that thousands of other Nazi war criminals were living in Canada."
"That's awful," said Kat. "Didn't the government screen Nazis out?"
"Again," said Walt. "This was just a rumour. When World War II ended, the Cold War began. The government was more concerned with screening out possible Soviet spies and terrorists than former Nazis."
Kat frowned. "I don't understand. They should still have been screening out Nazis."
"I agree," said Orysia. "But thousands of refugees and displaced persons were immigrating all at the same time. It was hard for the immigration officials to do proper screening. There were so many languages to deal with. And the sheer volume of immigrants was something else."
"What does this have to do with Dido?" asked Kat.
"He was one of the many thousand Ukrainian immigrants who came to Canada because their part of Ukraine had been taken over by the Soviet Union."
"He and Baba were Displaced Persons escaping Communism. Dido told me all about that."
"They were escaping both Communism and Nazism," added her father. "The Nazis considered Ukrainians and other Slavs to be sub-human."
"I thought only Jews and Gypsies were considered subhuman by the Nazis," replied Kat.
"Jews and Gypsies were considered even worse than subhuman," said her father. "Where some Slavs were to be kept alive for slave-labour, every last Jew and Gypsy was to be murdered."
A shudder went through Kat that even the warmth of the wood stove couldn't shake. How could one group hate so much? It was utter evil.
"I still don't understand what this has to do with Dido, and what all this has to do with war crimes," said Kat.
By this time Walt had filled up one whole frame with sliced mushroom caps and was working on the second. As he placed the empty frame carefully on top of the one covered with cheesecloth and mushrooms, he continued to explain the situation to his daughter. "The allegation that was made in the 1980s was that amongst those postwar immigrants, there were Nazi war criminals who had snuck in and were being protected by their ethnic communities."
Kat was silent for a moment, considering the scenario as she blotted dry the pidpenky one by one. She looked up first to her father and then to her mother, frowning. "Do you think that's possible?" she asked.
"Anything's possible," replied Walt. "But it's not likely. The Nazis were brutal beasts. In the case of the Ukrainian community, I just can't see it."
Her mother nodded in agreement. "If there was a Nazi in our community, he would be drummed out."
"But what you're telling me is that this commission showed that there were Nazis hiding out in Canada," argued Kat. "So obviously, someone was protecting them."
Orysia put down her mushroom brush and looked her daughter in the eye. "Actually, hon, that's not what the file says at all."
"Then what does it say?"
"For one, that there are not thousands of Nazi war criminals hiding in Canada. The official list given to the Commission contained 774 names."
"That's still a lot," said Kat.
"But the people on that list were just suspects," continued her mother.
Kat heard a car trunk close in the driveway, and looked out the front door to see that her sister had returned in their mother's car with two huge paper bags filled with groceries.
"Help!" she called from the door step. Walt jumped up and opened the door, taking one of the bags from her and depositing it in the kitchen.
"Did you remember freezer bags?" asked Orysia, standing up from her own work with the mushrooms to give her oldest daughter a hug and to take the other bag from her.
"I've got them," replied Genya.
"We're talking about Dido's case and Mr. Vincent's file," Walt explained to Genya, who could see that another serious conversation was taking place.
Genya pulled off her jacket and draped it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and then began unpacking the groceries. "I read some of that this morning," she began. "I bet every one of the people on that list did something bad to get there."
Her mother rolled her eyes with impatience. "If you'd read the whole file, Genya, then you know that half the people never lived in Canada, and many on the list weren't even born before World War II. What's the "bad" stuff they were supposed to have done? Have a foreign accent?"
"Maybe a neighbour complained about the music they were playing," suggested Walt, thinking of the music Gen liked to play.