Beach author Roxana Spicer shares her mother’s amazing story of survival during Second World War

By MATTHEW STEPHENS

During the Second World War, approximately 35 million prisoners of war (POW’s) were held captive by both the Allies and the Axis powers. Among those prisoners was Agnei (Agnes) Rosa Nicolaievna Butorina, member of the military force of the Soviet Union, and mother of investigative journalist, filmmaker, and now author Roxana Spicer.

A Beach resident, Spicer has documented and retold her mother’s triumphant story to overcome one of the biggest hardships in human history in her latest novel The Traitor’s Daughter: Captured by the Nazis, Pursued by the KGB, My Mother’s Odyssey to Freedom from Her Secret Past.

“At the core of the story was what happened behind the barbed wire of these Nazi camps. Where did the main character disappear for 1,000 days during the Second World War, and how did she survive?” said Spicer.

Her novel is told through the lens of both herself and her mother; following pivotal moments in her journey during the war; her time served in the Red Army; being forced into captivity by the Nazi’s in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland; working as a slave labourer in Germany; fleeing the country to escape the KGB following the war; and her final days before passing at a hospital in Calgary at the age of 86.

Described by Spicer as a “mystery story,” the novel balances the perspective of both protagonists while exploring the relationship between a mother desperate to bury her past, and a daughter eager to unearth her mother’s story.

“The book is about a journey. It’s about a search for answers. It’s about a daughter’s search for the truth about her mother,” said Spicer.

Getting her mother to share her story with her was no easy task. Known for her quietness, Spicer had to be patient and wait for her mother to open up about the events that transpired in her past, rather than prodding her for answers.

“It was really impossible to do a deep dive into her story while she was alive because she was so resistant to revealing her deepest darkest secrets. So, I still persisted in interviewing her over the years, trying to get a few pieces of information,” said Spicer.

It wasn’t until the passing of her mother and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that Spicer felt comfortable to actively pursue the story.

“I didn’t really start in earnest until two things happened, both of them were tragedies, but they were both opportunities. One was the death of my mother, but the first one was actually the death of the world’s first communist country, and that was the death of the Soviet Union,” said Spicer.

“Once the Soviet Union fell apart, I was able to get access to people and documents that had been kept hidden away behind the iron curtain for so many decades.”

Since the age of 10, she had been documenting fragmented pieces of her mother’s past, which had been sparingly revealed to her in the midnight hours at their home in rural Saskatchewan.

“This music and alcohol and this atmosphere in the midnight hours of Saskatchewan she would begin to reveal bits and pieces of her story,” said Spicer during an interview with TVO Today.

Although she and her two brothers shared an interest in their mother’s past, only Roxana took it upon herself to dive deeper to uncover and document the whole story. However, without every piece of the puzzle, Spicer looked to her skills as a former journalist and travelled to Russia to uncover as much information as she possibly could.

“I had the benefit of a very good education at Carleton University, and very good training at the CBC as a journalist. That gave me the courage and the skills to be able to ask direct questions,” said Spicer.

In addition to details shared by her mother, Spicer used the help of historians, eyewitnesses during the Second World War, and her aunt (Agnes’ sister) to help bring the story together.

During her time in the Moscow in 2012, Spicer spoke with Irina Lazarevna Scherbakowa, recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize and the founder of Memorial: one of Russia’s largest human rights organizations. After asking about the set of numbers tattooed on her mother’s arm, Scherbakowa confirmed that Spicer’s mother was in fact an inmate at Auschwitz; adding a new layer to her traumatic tale.

After seven years of compiling suppressed memories, historic details, and eyewitness accounts, Spicer had all she needed to cohesively share her mother’s journey with the world.

When asked what her mother would have thought of the book, Spicer said she believes the book would have given Agnes a new perspective on her life story.

“If she were to take this big fat book and read it, I think she would have come to realize that I was right when I first suggested to her that her life story was a miracle,” said Spicer. “I think she would come around to acknowledge that her life was a miracle, and that’s really something.”

Due to Russia’s strict regulations on recounting events from the Second World War, Spicer has not returned to the country since completing her novel. She mentions that, similar to her mother’s life story, she too feels uncomfortable returning to Russia, out of fear for her own safety.

“It’s really hard to wrap my brain around it, but my book would actually be illegal in Putin’s Russia because the book challenges his vision of World War Two, and Putin has made it a criminal offence to challenge his version of the heroic Red Army and how the Second World War was won by the Russians,” said Spicer.

“I have made 13 trips to Russia to do the research for this book – I won’t be making a 14th trip. It would be dangerous for me as a journalist to go back.”

While reflecting on the story, Spicer discovered familiar parallels between her life and her mother’s, despite all the years that have passed. “The parallels between what’s happening today in 2025, the extent to which Russia once again has become this closed off hermetically sealed off secret country with all kinds of intrigue happening behind the official stories,” said Spicer.

Spicer grew up in Netherhill, Saskatchewan. While the rest of her family stayed in the province, her pursuit to become a journalist brought her to Ontario, where she studied at Carleton University.

As a natural-born storyteller, she has worked for a number of publications and production teams, most notably, as a documentary producer and investigative journalist for CBC, where she produced award-winning works across the country. She also worked as an executive producer and writer for TVO. Spicer has lived in Toronto for the last 35 years, most of that time in the Beach near Queen Street East and Lee Avenue.

“My parents are buried out west, my two brothers still live out west, and I’m the renegade that came out to Toronto and settled here,” said Spicer.

During a book tour for the novel, Spicer returned to an old community hall in her hometown of Netherhill. She recalled the event as being a cathartic moment following the publication of her mother’s life story, and how her contribution to the community brought traffic to her small town like she had never seen before.

“I was able to go back to my tiny little village of Netherhill Saskatchewan, which Google calls a ‘ghost town.’ Bringing the book back to Saskatchewan in a way was almost like a homecoming for my mother,” said Spicer.

“To do the book presentation at the old community hall was an incredible experience because I can say it is the first time in the history of that village, as far as I know, that there’s ever been a traffic jam.”

This is not the first time Spicer has covered her mother’s story. Back in 2017, she released a short film of the same name which covered her trip to Russia to uncover more details about her mother’s life.

Currently, Spicer is developing a new CBC investigative documentary, titled Abducted, a Family Story, for the flag-ship network series First Hand.

Spicer will also be hosting a public author reading event for her book at Beach United Church on Monday, Feb. 24, at 7:30 p.m.

With the release of The Traitor’s Daughter, Spicer hopes readers will resonate with the novel’s overarching themes of love and perseverance through overbearing hardship.

“Love conquers all. Love will carry you through the darkest, grimmest days. Whether it’s love of family, of homelands – and the belief in yourself that you can persevere,” said Spicer. “I hope that’s the message that inspires young people to sit with this book and really think about what that experience would have been like for somebody under the age of 22 years old to have persevered and conquered that.”