The situation in the Donbas is worsening. The authorities are appealing to the inhabitants to leave for safer regions of Ukraine. Over a thousand people wait for evacuation trains at the station in Kramatorsk. Among them, women, children and the elderly. Men of draft age only come to escort their families, help them with their luggage and depart after giving them a hug. Families stand in line. …
Not everyone wants to leave the Donbas, which is threatened by war. Some residents are ready to stand up for it. Like Julia, a 34-year-old Information Technology lecturer who volunteered for the territorial defense after the attack on Kramatorsk. It was another day of evacuations from Kramatorsk, a city of 150,000 residents, in eastern Ukraine. 34-year-old IT lecturer Julia Dovinova wanted to help somehow. All her volunteer …
The Russians are preparing for a major offensive in the Donbas. Missiles and rockets fall on front-line towns every day. Shot-up and burnt-out buildings, broken windows, rubble scattered all over, the thunder of cannons and the whistle of missiles have already become part of the landscape of Severodonetsk, the temporary capital of the Luhansk oblast. Until recently, over 100,000 people lived in the city. Now less than …
The Russians are shelling Kramatorsk. During one of the nighttime attacks, 25 civilians were injured. It was after three o’clock when two loud explosions rang out. Viktoria, 54, went outside to smoke. She quickly finished her cigarette because it was chilly out and went back to bed, covering herself with a duvet. A moment passed. There was a flash, a boom, and dirt, glass and rubble pelted …
Human rights in Turkey Photo: A mural describing human rights in Turkey outside of the public education building in Bayramic Turkey, 25 May 2009. Author: Mdozturk, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Two fundamental dilemmas that have always existed in the realm of human rights affect every aspect of our lives today more than ever. The first of these is the dilemma between freedom and security, and the other is the …
A conversation between Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Dwayne Betts 9 December 2020moderated by Jeffrey Goldfarbintroduced by Marci Shoreorganized by Lala Pop Marci: As you know, the original impetus for this forum was horror of the children being taken away from their parents at the American border, and my saying to Stephen Naron that we should use material from the Fortunoff archive to prepare a film about parent-child separation during …
How local meanings mattered in 1900 and still matter now In the spring of 2020, I received an email from David Kenley asking me if I would consider contributing to Teaching about Asia in a Time of Pandemic, a book he was editing. I told the historian of China and Southeast Asia that I would like to be part of the project but did not have anything to …
The Nazis tore apart Jewish families. They pursued the work of separating families because they perceived Jewish lives as having no value, and their family unit as carrying no integrity and sanctity. The history of family separation is a story of unspeakable emotional pain, as family members often bid a permanent farewell to their loved ones in confusing and terrifying circumstances. It is also a story that sheds …
I am a first-year teacher at a middle school outside of Baltimore. My school is one of the most diverse – and therefore most low income, underrepresented, and overpoliced – schools in my county. Many parents in this Baltimore district use false addresses just to remove their children from the city school system, and our middle school is a close option. It’s not hard to understand why the children in …
The only avenue in which humans can understand tragedy One of the hardest things about learning the stories of people who were in concentration camps in the Holocaust is that you feel like, especially for an American teenager, that you can never truly grasp what they went through. Even though I have family who were killed in the Holocaust, there always seemed to be a disconnect for me, …
