In her columns, our collaborator Nathalie Plaat calls on your stories. In March, she asked you to tell her about the war, what she deposited in you, in your lineages or your life, what she is working on in you, psychologically. Selected extract.
I read regularly [les] texts [de Nathalie Plaat] and I must admit that the one of March 7th touched me deeply. I will try to put into words my feelings about this barbaric invasion that turns my guts upside down. […] I have no expectations and I do this exercise to comfort my broken heart from all this pain.
My grandparents fled Ukraine in 1911. They fled famine, the gulag and the Bolshevik revolution. Their elders had foreseen the conflicts which plunged the empire into a great murderous famine and the birth of the communist. My grandmother, who spoke more than my grandfather, never forgot the human misery she saw and experienced in her native land and would never have crossed the ocean to return to the continent. European. So much so that when her eldest son let my cousin, who was married to a Canadian armed forces pilot, go to Germany in 1969, she was convinced she would never come back.
In short, the history of our generation was not so bloody until that cursed day of February 24, 2022. Since that day, I watch this war unfolding before our eyes, live, and feel so helpless. With my cousins, we delve into the past to try to understand what the Ukrainians could have done to deserve this savage aggression, and all we find is a deep desire to live their culture in a democracy and closer to Europe. We don’t believe we have any family living in Ukraine, but all Michaluk descendants are deeply affected by what increasingly looks like genocide.
Even if everything is not perfect, the desire of this people to live freely is driven by a long history through the ages with its neighboring country, its sister almost, who wants its destruction. While I understand the fears of the west in front of a despot like Putin, I have a hard time understanding that we let a people be slaughtered, but more so, how we let this monster grow up and do just about everything What he wants !
Reading the opinions in the print media, many people draw parallels to World War II, which was very similar to the invasion of Austria by Germany before the latter attacked Poland. With the difference that today everything unfolds live before our eyes as the Russian government promulgates lies upon lies and carries out senseless repression.
In the morning, I wake up hoping that the Ukrainian president and his family are still safe and sound; that the Ukrainians who remained in their country are also safe and sound; that the Russian people rise up (that, there is little chance of that happening as long as they do not know that it is war and that it is Russia who is the aggressor); a miracle will happen! I hope that the resilience of the Ukrainians will be strong enough so that, like David against Goliath, they succeed in bringing down this giant that is Russia!
Here, spring is slowly setting in… I will sow sunflowers to grow a little of our ancestral land at home.
Thank you from the heart !