icon caret-left icon caret-right instagram pinterest linkedin facebook twitter goodreads question-circle facebook circle twitter circle linkedin circle instagram circle goodreads circle pinterest circle

 
 
 Born to Write
 A Blog by Author Amy Hill Hearth
 
 
 

Ukraine

When I see what is happening in Ukraine, I feel it in my bones, my family having gone through something similar in WW II. 

 

My mother lost numerous members of her family, some at the hands of the Nazis (for reasons we don't know), and, at the end of the war, by Russians. Russian soldiers chased my family, all civilians, and murdered several, including my great-grandpa, who was in his eighties. (He was shot and, while still alive, thrown off a bridge to drown.) My mother and her parents were, fortunately, in America at this time.

 

While in college, I interviewed several surviving members of my mother's famiily. They had been Displaced Persons at the end of the war and went through absolute hell. One great-aunt had lost both legs to frostbite. Eventually, they found their way to an American zone where they were taken care of, but the physical and emotional scars lived on. They were damaged people, and some of that trauma, no doubt, has been passed to my generation and even the next. 

 

What is happening in Ukraine at this moment is horrible and has made me reflect on my kinfolk who fled a similar situation in 1945 -1946. There are relatives I never met, and whose fate I will never learn. I do not know where they are buried, assuming they were buried properly at all.

 

The atrocities being committed in Ukraine will have a life of their own that will be felt a long time from now.