At War45-03-0687The Rainbow

Words at War. A little broadcasting company in cooperation with the Council on Books in War Time presents another program in the series Words at War. Gramatizing the most representative books to come out of this great world conflict.

Tonight, Vanda Vasilezka's Stalin Prize novel, Narainbo. Listen, do you hear that? That sound is a body swinging from a gallows. The body of a 16 year old boy. It has been there for a month, frozen stiff in the betterest winter the Ukraine has known.

The Nazis hang the boy as a warning to the villagers and to the guerrillas who are struck with silent fury from the bordering forests. I want you to meet one of these guerrillas. She is Ol'yane of Kostjok, a woman in her early 40s.

Her hair is graying at the temples. Her face is plain, rough-hewn, a common peasant face. She's being questioned at the German headquarters by Captain Court Berner, a German by birth, a Nazi by breed. So you are the Gorilla who has come back to the village?

You and all the women. Why did you come back? What were you sent for? Nobody sent me. I came on my own. Why? Answer me. Why? Well, I will tell you why. You saw that all this Gorilla business was nonsense. You didn't want to take part in it anymore.

anymore. No, I couldn't anymore. Why? I came home to bear my child. You having a child at your time of life? Where's your husband? He was killed in the war. I joined the gorillas but I didn't tell them about my baby. Nobody knew. Well, how my husband and I dreamed this child that was denied us. And now it's come and he isn't here to