sorry no gift link
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Gifted article:
My heart goes out to all the parents/family members/friends involved and glad to read some are successful, but there are many more.
From the article:
No one knows the full number of Ukrainian children who have been transferred to Russia or Russian-occupied Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has identified more than 19,000 children that it says have been forcibly transferred or deported, but those working on the issue say the real number is closer to 150,000.
Russia has defended its transfer of the children as a humanitarian effort to rescue them from the war zone, but it has refused to cooperate with Kyiv or international organizations in tracing many of them. After the I.C.C. issued the arrest warrant for Ms. Lvova-Belova, she said that relatives were free to come and collect their children but that only 59 were waiting to go home ā a claim that Ukrainian officials have dismissed as absurd.
Thanks, @Creekland . I used your link on Facebook too.
Reminiscent of what DJT did with families at the border. Beyond tragic.
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I would be one of those parents. I feel for them.
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I would be too. Iād do anything to save my kids if needed.
From what Iāve read, many of these kidnapped kids were in āorphanagesā yet these were not typical orphanages but rather boarding schools where kids were sent by parents that lived in remote villages and extreme poverty by our western standards so kids could have access to education and proper medical care and nutrition. Many parents just couldnāt take care of the kids because of disability or alcoholism. Many of these parents may not even know what happened to their children or where and now to look for them even if they could take care of them. It is so heartbreaking. This war is absolutely senseless.
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This might be understatement of the year.
Itās really sad that essentially one human is allowed to do so much, including death, to so many, both in Ukraine and Russia. Itās mind boggling. Plain old murder is bad enough, but murdering multiple thousands?
(FWIW, I feel the same way about other wars too.)
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My great grandparents came to this country from Ukraine in the 1910s. They left two children with my great-grandmotherās sister tor raise as her own, which she did. They did this because they knew that if they stayed, the children would be taken from the family and raised as ethnic Russians to hate their actual family. My great-grandfather was in the Ukrainian nationalist armed forces.
This is cultural genocide and it goes back to before the Soviet Union.
I grew up being taught to lie about them because I didnāt live in a Ukrainian-American community. My grandfather was afraid of his heritage. He was subpoenaed and interrogated during the Cold War for ālooking Russianā while he was serving in the Air Force. This paranoia caused a rift between him and his parents, as he was pushed to choose between his job and his parents. His mother tried to learn English but always had a very strong accent.
This is very personal and I am sharing it online because after all of the life Iāve lived, Iām tired of carrying this identity around like itās a shameful secret. My distant relatives, whom I do not know, should not be extinguished by Putin while my fellow Americans complain about gas prices.
Iām worried that our culture has become complacent with dictatorships, genocide, and cultural genocide. Assimilation is not the same thing as kidnapping children and teaching them to kill their own family, which is what Russia is doing.
Rant over.
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@anon87843660 I totally agree. My mother, parents and aunt managed to arrive in NYC in 1939, from Danzig which was a free city between WWI and WWII, German before WWI and now Gdansk and completely Polish. My younger aunt was born in 1940 (surprise!) and was always told by her parents never to say anything about her family, not that they were Jewish, not that they were immigrants, nothing. Considering that she spoke almost no English when she started Kindergarten, that was a considerable burden on her. My mother married an āAmericanā Jewish guy (my dad) and my younger aunt spent A LOT of her time with our family, although I loved my Oma and Opa and they spent a lot of time with us as well. (They adored my father and he, them.)
This kind of disruption is so hard.
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@anon87843660, Iām sorry you and your family had to go through that. @oldmom4896, you as well. I am Oma to my grandson
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And thatās the plan for my daughter and fiance and me! It will be such a thrill!
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