Helen Dale (born Helen Darville; 1972) is an Australian writer and lawyer. She is best known for writing ''The Hand that Signed the Paper'', a novel about a
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
family who collaborated with the Nazis in
The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
, under the pseudonym Helen Demidenko.
A daughter of British immigrants, Darville was educated at
Redeemer Lutheran College
, motto_translation = Our hope is in Christ
, established =
, type = Private primary and secondary school
, religious_affiliation = Lutheranism
, denomination = Lutheran Church of Aust ...
in
Rochedale, a suburb of
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...
. While studying English literature at the
University of Queensland
, mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work
, established =
, endowment = A$224.3 million
, budget = A$2.1 billion
, type = Public research university
, chancellor = Peter Varghese
, vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry
, city = B ...
, she wrote ''The Hand that Signed the Paper''. In 1993, the novel won
The Australian/Vogel Literary Award
''The Australian''/Vogel Literary Award is an Australian literary award for unpublished manuscripts by writers under the age of 35. The prize money, currently A$20,000, is the richest and most prestigious award for an unpublished manuscript in ...
for an unpublished manuscript.
Dale published her book in 1994 and won the
Miles Franklin Award
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–195 ...
, becoming the award's youngest winner. The following year, she was the subject of a major Australian literary controversy because she had falsely claimed Ukrainian ancestry as part of the basis of the book (and her pseudonym). The misrepresentation has been described as a "
literary hoax
Literary forgery (also known as literary mystification, literary fraud or literary hoax) is writing, such as a manuscript or a literary work, which is either deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author, or is a purported memoir ...
" in ''
The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
.''
[ The novel was subsequently reissued under her legal name, then Helen Darville. It won the 1995 Australian Literary Society Gold Medal.
After teaching, Dale returned to university, gaining her law degree in 2002. She later did post-graduate law study at Oxford and completed an LLB degree in 2012 at the University of Edinburgh. She returned to Australia and became a senior adviser to ]David Leyonhjelm
David Ean Leyonhjelm ( "lion-helm"; born 1 April 1952) is an Australian former politician. He was a Senator for New South Wales, representing the Liberal Democratic Party from 2014 to 2019. Having been elected at the 2013 federal election, he ...
, a Liberal Democrat
Several political party, political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties usually follow a liberal democracy, liberal democratic ideology.
Active parties
Former parties ...
member of the Australian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the Bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives (Australia), House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Chapter ...
, but at the end of May 2016 Leyonhjelm revealed that Dale had left his employ.
Early life
A daughter of British immigrants, Darville was educated at Redeemer Lutheran College
, motto_translation = Our hope is in Christ
, established =
, type = Private primary and secondary school
, religious_affiliation = Lutheranism
, denomination = Lutheran Church of Aust ...
in Rochedale, a suburb of Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...
. She had previously claimed that her father was Ukrainian, and her mother was Irish.
''The Hand that Signed the Paper'': Novel and controversy
While studying English literature at the University of Queensland
, mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work
, established =
, endowment = A$224.3 million
, budget = A$2.1 billion
, type = Public research university
, chancellor = Peter Varghese
, vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry
, city = B ...
, she wrote ''The Hand that Signed the Paper,'' a novel about a Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
family who collaborated with the Nazis in The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
. In 1993, the novel won The Australian Vogel Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript.
Contents
The novel tells the story of a Ukrainian family trying to survive a decade of Stalinist purges
The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secreta ...
and state-imposed poverty and famine. The family comprises the parents, a daughter, and two sons. They suffer abuse by the drunken local commissar and are refused treatment by the village doctor and his wife (a secular Jew). Many Ukrainians hail the German invaders as liberators from Soviet oppression. Many volunteered for the German armed forces—Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...
, SS, and Ordnungspolizei
The ''Ordnungspolizei'' (), abbreviated ''Orpo'', meaning "Order Police", were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo organisation was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly on power after regional police jurisdiction w ...
. The novel stresses the arbitrariness of the assignments to military units. A Ukrainian could as easily end up fighting on the front alongside the Wehrmacht as be in a death squad.
The two young brothers are separated in military assignments: 16-year-old Evheny to Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
Einsatzgruppen
(, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...
C (a mobile killing squad) and the elder 19-year-old Vitaly to the SS training facility for Ukrainians at Trawniki
Trawniki is a village in Świdnik County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the present-day gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Trawniki. It lies approximately south-east of Świdnik and south-east of the regio ...
in Poland. Evheny is implicated in the massacre at Babi Yar
Babi Yar (russian: Ба́бий Яр) or Babyn Yar ( uk, Бабин Яр) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The fi ...
outside Kiev, while Vitaly is posted to Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...
as a guard. Evheny is later sent to a front-line Waffen SS
The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both occupied and unoccupied lands.
The grew from th ...
formation on the Eastern Front, while Vitaly is posted to northern Italy. He is part of German anti-partisan activity in the wake of Italy's withdrawal from the Axis alliance.
Style
The novel is told primarily from the point of view of Kateryna, sister of the two brothers, and Magda, Vitaly's common-law wife
Common-law marriage, also known as non-ceremonial marriage, marriage, informal marriage, or marriage by habit and repute, is a legal framework where a couple may be considered married without having formally registered their relation as a civil ...
from the Polish village near the Treblinka extermination camp. Kateryna has a relationship with a German SS Hauptsturmführer
__NOTOC__
(, ; short: ''Hstuf'') was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organizations such as the SS, NSKK and the NSFK. The rank of ''Hauptsturmführer'' was a mid-level commander and had equivalent seniority to a ...
. Magda assists a Jewish prisoner to escape after the Treblinka prisoner revolt in August 1943. The family's story is gradually revealed by Fiona, Evheny's Australian-born daughter, who starts investigating the past after her uncle Vitaly is charged in the early 1990s with war crimes in World War II.
The book is frank about the anti-semitism of its major characters (who blame Jews for the excesses of Communism), and Darville represented the lives of Ukrainian military men in a sympathetic manner, rather than featuring their victims as is more usual in Holocaust literature. These elements attracted accusations of anti-semitism and condemnation of the book by leaders of Australia's Jewish community. There was a perception that the attitudes of the author "Helen Demidenko" may have been informed by her Ukrainian ethnic identity, until her pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
was revealed along with her false representation of the book as history.
Controversy
''The Hand that Signed the Paper'' won the Miles Franklin Award
The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin (1879–195 ...
, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Australia. At the time, the media discovered Helen Dale's identity and legal name. This promoted much debate on the nature of identity, ethnicity, and authenticity in Australian literature.
Despite the adverse publicity for the author, the novel won the 1995 Australian Literary Society Gold Medal.
When Dale submitted her novel to the University of Queensland Press
Established in 1948, University of Queensland Press (UQP) is an Australian publishing house.
Founded as a traditional university press, UQP has since branched into publishing books for general readers in the areas of fiction, non-fiction, poetr ...
in 1993, she said it was based upon recorded interviews with her own relatives, among others her uncle "Vitaly Demidenko". After the awards, the ''Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper i ...
'' mistakenly reported in 2005 that the novel had been submitted as a non-fiction book. The author's 1993 note accompanying her manuscript had read: "The things narrated in this book really happened, the things they did rehistorical actualities." Then Dale wrote that she was presenting her book as fiction, saying: "But this is also a work of fiction. I have presented it as fiction...."
Books that discuss the scandal
The controversy that surrounded ''The Hand that Signed the Paper'' inspired the publication in 1996 of two books that assessed the novel and issues of authenticity: Robert Manne
Robert Michael Manne (born 31 October 1947) is an Emeritus Professor of politics and Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia. He is a leading Australian public intellectual.
Background
Robert Manne was born in Melbo ...
's ''The Culture of Forgetting: Helen Demidenko and the Holocaust'' and Andrew Riemer's ''The Demidenko Debate''. Manne is very critical of Darville's book. Riemer is not, believing her approach was consistent with fiction, even if she tried to exaggerate the specific historic basis of her work.
Later work and recent years
In 1995, Darville published a short story, "Pieces of the Puzzle", in the Australian culture journal ''Meanjin
''Meanjin'' (), formerly ''Meanjin Papers'' and ''Meanjin Quarterly'', is an Australian literary magazine. The name is derived from the Turrbal word for the spike of land where the city of Brisbane is located. It was founded in 1940 in Brisbane ...
''. The byline was 'Demidenko', although the journal noted that the author had "taken back" her legal name of Darville. She has said that she had met Ukrainian witnesses to the war and the Holocaust, and based the story on their accounts. The Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance educat ...
wrote to her demanding that she identify these possible war criminals.
Dale was briefly a columnist with the Brisbane daily newspaper ''The Courier-Mail
''The Courier-Mail'' is an Australian newspaper published in Brisbane. Owned by News Corp Australia, it is published daily from Monday to Saturday in Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid format. Its editorial offices are located at Bowen Hills, ...
''. She was dismissed for accusations of plagiarism after repeating jokes originally from the 'Evil Overlord List
In fiction and mythology, a dark lord (sometimes capitalized as Dark Lord or referred to as an Evil Overlord, Evil Emperor etc. depending on the work) is an antagonistic archetype, acting as the pinnacle of villainy and evil within a typicall ...
' in one of her columns and passing them off as her own. She continued to write freelance features for other News Corporation
News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Ne ...
newspapers and magazines, and occasionally the Fairfax press. In 2017, an investigation by BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John S. Johnson III to focus on tracking viral content. Ken ...
revealed that Dale had also plagiarised a number of social media posts in her Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
feeds. BuzzFeed asked Dale why she had been lifting the tweets. She replied over Twitter direct message: "Cos it's amusing and I don't like Twitter. And don't you have more important stuff to be writing about?"
In 2000, Darville was again accused of anti-semitism after interviewing David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English author and Holocaust denier who has written on the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. His works include ''The Destruction of Dresden'' (19 ...
, a Holocaust denier
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
* ...
, for ''Australian Style'' magazine during his libel
Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...
trial in London. (It was decided against him). She wrote a post-September 11 article in ''The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
''.
After working as a secondary teacher for several years in Australia and the UK, Darville returned to the University of Queensland in 2002 to study law. Graduating with a first class honours degree in law in 2005,she commenced work as a judge's associate
A judge's associate is an individual who provides assistance to a judge or court.
In Australia, a judge's associate (not to be confused with a tipstaff) is a recent law graduate or lawyer who performs various duties to assist a specific judge, ...
for Peter Dutney, a justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland
The Supreme Court of Queensland is the highest court in the Australian State of Queensland. It was formerly the Brisbane Supreme Court, in the colony of Queensland.
The original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court allows its trial division to he ...
.
Previously a regular contributor to the libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's e ...
group blog Catallaxy files under the name 'skepticlawyer', Darville now has her own blog in this name.
Since gaining her law degree, Darville has also appeared on the SBS program ''Insight
Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings:
*a piece of information
*the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intu ...
'', and as a guest of the University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...
's Publishing and Communications Program. She is associated with the Australian Skeptics
Australian Skeptics is a loose confederation of like-minded organisations across Australia that began in 1980. Australian Skeptics investigate paranormal and pseudoscientific claims using scientific methodologies. This page covers all Australian ...
, and has written for both their in-house magazine and '' Quadrant,'' a conservative journal. In 2007 Darville was reported to be working on a second novel.
Dale completed the Bachelor of Civil Law
Bachelor of Civil Law (abbreviated BCL, or B.C.L.; la, Baccalaureus Civilis Legis) is the name of various degrees in law conferred by English-language universities. The BCL originated as a postgraduate degree in the universities of Oxford and Camb ...
programme at the University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
, where she was a member of Brasenose College
Brasenose College (BNC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It began as Brasenose Hall in the 13th century, before being founded as a college in 1509. The library and chapel were added in the m ...
. In 2008 she started reading for an MPhil in Law (Jurisprudence). She completed a Graduate LLB degree at the University of Edinburgh School of Law
Edinburgh Law School, founded in 1707, is a school within the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom dedicated to research and teaching in law. It is located in the historic Old College, the original site of the University. Two of ...
in 2012. During that time she won the Law Society of Scotland's student essay competition. The topic of her prize-winning essay was same-sex marriage.[ Dale completed a post-graduate qualification before beginning work in 2013 as a trainee solicitor with the law firm MBM Commercial.
Darville is reported to have worked variously as a graphic designer, property law lecturer, and physical education teacher.
In 2014, Dale returned to Australia, becoming a senior adviser to ]David Leyonhjelm
David Ean Leyonhjelm ( "lion-helm"; born 1 April 1952) is an Australian former politician. He was a Senator for New South Wales, representing the Liberal Democratic Party from 2014 to 2019. Having been elected at the 2013 federal election, he ...
, a Liberal Democrat
Several political party, political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties usually follow a liberal democracy, liberal democratic ideology.
Active parties
Former parties ...
member of the Australian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the Bicameralism, bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives (Australia), House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Chapter ...
. She resigned during the election campaign in 2016.
Her most recent work is a two-part novel titled ''Kingdom of the Wicked''. The first book, ''Rules'', came out in 2017 and the second, ''Order'', in 2018. It is a reimagining of the trial of Jesus Christ at the hands of Pontius Pilate in a technologically sophisticated Roman Empire.
Further reading
Jeff Sparrow – "The Return of Helen Demidenko: From Literary Hoaxer to Political Operator" (2015)
* Meyer-Therese-Marie (2006) ''Where Fiction Ends: Four Scandals of Literary Identity Construction''. Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. . Four case studies of fictional identity creation: Demidenko compared to Ern Malley, B. Wongar, and Frederick Philip Grove (FPB, German-Canadian author).
References
External links
Audio interview with Helen Darville on ABC Radio National, with transcript
'My life as a young Australian novelist', May 2006 ''Quadrant'' article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Darville, Helen
1972 births
Living people
Australian women novelists
Miles Franklin Award winners
ALS Gold Medal winners
20th-century Australian novelists
20th-century Australian women writers
University of Queensland alumni
Alumni of Brasenose College, Oxford
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Hoaxes in Australia
1994 hoaxes
Impostors
Australian sceptics