Throughout my life, I have read and studied a lot about World War II and the Holocaust. “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank. Elie Wiesel’s “Night”. BBC film “God on Trial”. Ben Elton’s Two Brothers. Reading or watching or visiting the museum “Jewish Memory and Holocaust in Ukraine” in Dnipro, my hometown, I have always wondered what it was like to belong to the nation that a mad dictator decided to exterminate. What it was like to live with that knowledge.
But even in my worst nightmares, I couldn’t imagine that I would learn it personally, that I would wake up one day and know that I and my people were doomed to destruction.
Encyclopedia Britannica defines genocide as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race”, and quotes Raphael Lemkin, the author of the term, on its key component as the “criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.”
What the ruzzists are doing against us, the Ukrainians, is genocide.
An eight-year-old boy, a three-year-old girl, a 26-day-old baby and over 500 other children murdered and more than 1100 injured without mercy…
Thousands of adults whose health or lives have been taken from them…
Millions of internally and externally displaced…
Children and adolescents deported to ruzzia…
Apartment buildings and private houses, schools and universities, theaters and museums, infrastructural objects destroyed by rockets and bombs…
The list goes on, but here I want to focus on what it means to live with the knowledge that I and my nation are the target of serial killers. Well, it means rediscovering a lot.
You are rediscovering,
Your national identity, which comes with the acknowledgement of generational traumas.
Yourself, as you discover deep within yourself previously unknown levels of fear and – no, not hatred, but contempt. This helps to dehumanize the enemy, and you need it to survive. You are also learning to live with unforgiveness. Still, you wonder how long it will take to regain humanity.
Your idea of God. As a Protestant Christian, I am more used to God who gave his life for me and to me personally, who wants a personal relationship with me. Isn’t that what we are taught from the very first steps of faith? But oh my God, how I want to see You as our God, as the God of justice, fighting for us and punishing our enemies!
Your faith. It’s not the first valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4) in life, and I’m sure our faith is formed thanks to those valleys. But this time the darkness is so deep and so thick that you often feel nothing but it.
And then, in the midst of your own turmoil, someone asks you, “Can you pray for me?” You pause in doubt to see if you can. But since when has personal darkness been an obstacle to prayer? You pray together and a little more light appears in your souls. And when the person says, “I see God in you”, you realize that no darkness can hide Him.
A friend said that if a meteorite hit Moscow right now and left nothing but the crater, it would be a mathematical proof of the existence of God.
I may never see such a magnificent act of God to stop the modern empire of evil. But I see a lot of ordinary people acting, helping, fighting, volunteering, supporting us, Ukrainians. They are “the proof of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1, NASB) and in hope against hope (Romans 4:18, NASB) I go on.
Veronika Voloshyna is one of our Global Peace Warriors (to learn more click here). She lived in Dnipro, Ukraine until she became a refugee after the war started, currently living in the Netherlands.
The paintings are from a special exhibition of original works from artists living through war in Ukraine titled “Light of Freedom.” The exhibition is at the Ukrainian American Archives and Museum in Hamtramck, Michigan, USA from August 18 through September 20, 2023. After that it will be on tour in other locations. For more information contact DetroitHelpsKyiv.com or uaamdetroit.gmail.com.
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