’The Traitor’s Daughter’ reveals secrets of a former Netherhill resident

By Joan Janzen

Like many people who lived through World War II, Agnes Spicer preferred to be silent about her wartime experiences, wishing to take them with her to her grave. Agnes was put to rest in the Netherhill Cemetery in 2009. However, the recent release of the book entitled “The Traitor’s Daughter,” written by her daughter Roxana Spicer, brings her past secrets into the light of day.

Agnes Spicer, along with her husband and family, lived in Netherhill from 1948 to 1998, where her husband Eric had a service station and Agnes ran a coffee shop. Later on, she ran the Homesteader restaurant in Kindersley. Their three children, Harold, Victor and Roxana, all attended school in Kindersley.

Photos submitted by Roxana Spicer

THE TRAITOR’S DAUGHTER: This was the last photo taken of former Netherhill residents, Roxana Spicer with her mother Agnes Spicer. Agnes spent her final years in Calgary and passed away in 2009. Roxana is the author of The Traitor’s Daughter, the story detailing her mother’s life during World War II.

Roxana and her Mom in 1956.

“The Traitor’s Daughter” will be on book shelves this summer.

“I first took pen to paper to tell her story in Westberry school,” Roxana said. It was there that her Grade 5 teacher first suggested Roxana become a journalist, words she obviously took to heart as she has become an award-winning journalist and television producer. “It’s surreal to see it in print because I’ve been living with this story in my head for a long time,” she said, referring to her mother’s life.

Information for her childhood transcripts was gathered late at night when Roxana would hear the “Russian Red Army Choir” playing on their old phonograph. She would find her mother smoking a cigarette, enjoying a shot of vodka and willing to reveal never before heard nuggets from her past - a past which her friends from Netherhill and area knew nothing about.

Agnes was born Agnei Rosa Nicolaievna during the Bolshevik Revolution in Soviet Russia in the village of Chusovoy, the daughter of political revolutionaries. “I went back to my mom’s birthplace and saw the log house she grew up in, which was still standing at that time,” Roxana said. “Her last name was engraved on a wooden door, and it didn’t match the name on my birth certificate. That was the first confirmation of her family name, and I saw her first name on a long-form birth certificate.”

Every detail of her mother’s life was unearthed as Roxana spent decades travelling, researching, and questioning her mother and other surviving family members. She discovered her mother was born in Lenin’s Soviet Union, served as a combat soldier in the Russian Red Army, and was captured by the Germans.

Roxana had believed her mother had spent most of the war as a slave labourer for the Germans until she discovered her mother hadn’t arrived in the Nazi resort town until 1944. This meant she needed to find out where her mother had been for three years.

A Russian neighbour told Roxana her mother had been taken to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp for women. However, she was also told the blue-numbered tattoo on her mother’s arm was evidence she had spent time at the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp.

“So many of the physical records were destroyed by the Nazis who were trying to cover up their war crimes,” Roxana said. “I’m very proud I got two interviews with a Russian historian. She had her team of researchers help me piece together a big part of the story. My mother

had a double whammy: she escaped the Nazis and escaped from Soviet Russia, but she couldn’t go home because she was branded a traitor.”

Instead, Agnes escaped to Canada as the only Russian war bride amongst the 47,783 women who sailed into Pier 21.

“In order to write the book, you have to live the book,” Roxana confessed. “I turned down other projects in order to finish the book; it’s taken seven and a half years. It’s been an intense experience.”

“The Traitor’s Daughter” can be ordered through all the major booksellers in Canada and will be shipped when it becomes available. It will also be on store bookshelves this summer.