In the last two weeks we have watched innocent women and children bombed and murdered in their neighborhoods in Ukraine. They have jammed into trains in a desperate effort to flee to safety and the unknown. The men have stayed behind to fight the superior Russian army as it slogs its way through their country. Their strength and determination have been an example to us all from their president to the mothers who have shown us courage in fiercely protecting their children. All this, while not knowing if their husbands, fathers, sons, and boyfriends will survive as they fight to save their country and their future.
This is not the first time the Russians have tried to destroy or take over, take your pick, Ukraine. The last time it was called “Holodomor” from the Ukraine “holod” meaning “hunger” and “mor” meaning “plague”, meaning “death by hunger”. Between 1931 and 1934, when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin was responsible for the death of 3.9 million Ukrainians mostly through starvation. Ukraine and the Soviet Union are known as the breadbasket of the world for its huge wheat crop. The Soviet wheat harvest dropped almost in half from 1931 to 1932. Rations were drastically reduced. Framers weren’t paid for their wheat. They worked on a ration system-based productivity. They had no money to buy food. Some historians believe Stalin was using the drought to eliminate the Ukrainian independence movement.
A few years later, Ukraine faced the Nazi killing machine. Four million Ukrainians, including one million Jews, were slaughtered. Much like Vladimir Putin, Hitler wanted more territory for the expansion of the Third Reich. Ukraine has become a western leaning democracy since its independence and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. Of course, Putin feels threatened with democracy on his border and has been hinting at taking over Ukraine for years.
Most of the over two million refugees have fled to neighboring Poland. A country which lost over five million to the Nazis in World War II. They have welcomed the Ukrainian refugees with food, clothing, medicine, and places to stay. Ordinary people stepping up to do anything they can to bring comfort to their neighbors. One of the indelible images was a line of children’s strollers and baby carriages left at a Polish train station for Ukrainian mothers to use as they piled off the crowded trains with their young children, many only infants. It makes me ashamed to think of the reaction of millions of Americans when thousands of people fleeing crime, poverty and death threats from drug gangs show up at our southern border. They don’t want them met with baby carriages but rather with cages and a wall. Maybe that’s because those Ukranian refugees are white Europeans and not Hispanics from Central America and it’s all happening a world away.
The world has come together to put pressure on Putin to stop the madness. The repercussions are being felt in all are lives from five-dollar gas to losses in the stock market. We don’t know when or how this will end. It’s a frightening time. But as worried as we are, think of those families in Ukraine fighting to stay alive. Imagine your home being hit by a missile or bomb and running through the street holding your child’s hand hoping you can make it to safety. Our history tells us we have not always been welcoming to people who don’t look like us or speak a different language or pray to a different god. The Ukrainians, and the Poles have memories of war that are giving them the strength to fight for their lives, their children, their country and all of us. It’s a lesson in courage and compassion we can all learn from.
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