Igor Karash | United States
Written by a brother and sister, Victor: a Soldier’s Story will be an approximately 200-page nonfiction graphic memoir that tells the story of their grandfather’s youth. A university student just out of his teens when Germany invaded the USSR during WWII, Victor Torkanovsky
ended up fighting in two of Russia’s most famous
battles against the Nazis: the defense of Leningrad and
the battle of Stalingrad. Taking part in arrests by the
secret police, interpreting interrogations of German
prisoners, starving nearly to death, being evacuated over
a frozen lake, manning an antitank gun at Stalingrad,
surviving an anti-Soviet rebellion--these were just some
of the activities this economics student in thick glasses
found himself doing instead of homework assignments.
In the United States, he would have been part of the
“Greatest Generation.” But in the Soviet Union, Victor
and his peers were never permitted to talk openly
about what they saw and lived through because it
did not square with the official view of the war.
It was only after the collapse of the USSR that he was
able to tell his grandchildren, who had grown up away
from him in America, the truth about his traumatic
experiences as a young man.
Education:
Kharkov State Academy of Art and Design, Ukraine (KSADA)
Graphic Arts and Illustration
Graduation: 1988
Published titles: 6