A child of WWII, I never imagined any kind of repeat of the past. In February 1945 my mother and grandmother fled Berlin with me, just two and half years old, after we had lost our apartment to bombs. My grandfather stayed behind to serve as doctor.
I dimly remember the shouts and screams on the overcrowded station platform and my mother telling me over and over to hold on to her suitcase because she had no hand free to hold me. We were lucky to get on a train and luckier still to find a place to stay, even if it was only a tiny farmer‘s cottage without running water and we were, not surprisingly, unwelcome guests.
Now I see similar scenes, husbands kissing their wives and children good buy at a crowded railroad station, apartments destroyed, and the Russians coming ever closer. Only back then Germany had been the brutal aggressor and now Ukraine is a victim of Russia’s brutal invasion.