In These Gruesome Days

 I have a really hard time to find my words today.

I am fearful to read the news these days, fearful and increasingly mad, in fact so mad that if I was younger.....no let's not go there.

I think everybody is shocked by the events in the Ukraine, and are feeling fear for what this is and what it can still develop into. How a country in the 21st century can suddenly assault a neighbouring country the way Russia has done since February 24 is just unfathomable. Neglecting the agreements of the Geneva Conventions committing such gruesome war crimes, which are now coming into the eye of the public, is even worse.

But let me tell you something from long-gone days when I grew up in Germany.

It was 10 years after the end of WWII. Adults talked about the Russians. "Russians eat little children". Now, where did that come from? It came from Prussia where the advancing Russians took fierce revenge for the grueling events German Nazis had committed. And the tale was brought into the west with escaping Prussians, who had witnessed the terrible acts of violence Russian soldiers had committed along the way.

I get it. It was tit for tat. And unspeakable things had happened in Russia committed by German SS troops.

The Geneva Conventions was a series of international agreements from 1864 - 1977, establishing standards for humanitarian treatment of prisoners of war soldiers and civilians. Time after time these provisions have been violated. The last time that happened in Europe was in the Kosovo and Herzegovina. Most of us will remember the news in those days, but what is the difference when it happens today? The difference is that our media are posting the gruesome events of today's war on social media and that brings it so much closer to home. I don't know any people who are not disgusted about what happened and still happens in Ukraine. 

I am grieving for the people of Ukraine, their innocent children, and I grieve for the many animals. like the 220 dogs which were locked up in their cages without food and water and died a slow agonizing death. And I am grieving for the many zoo animals who had to die because their zoo was shot up and destroyed. And there was no alternative accommodations for surviving animals. 

Every day I am asking myself how the people will be able to live on with the memory of these violent acts.