Open Forum
-
Yurii Kaparulin
In mid-February 2022, I was on a business trip in Bucharest, but due to the escalating situation on the border with Russia, I decided to return to Ukraine, and begin my training with the local territorial defense forces. Early in the morning of February 24, I arrived at the airport in Bucharest. I was supposed to return to Odesa in a few hours and then go to my family in Kherson. Although I had anticipated the beginning of the invasion, all my plans were destroyed on the very first day of the invasion. The news of Russia’s attack and the beginning of full-scale war caught me unawares already in the waiting room on my plane boarding. That is when I got the news that my flight had been canceled. I rushed back to Bucharest to find a bus or car and return to Ukraine at any cost, but it was impossible that day. Moreover, in the afternoon I read the news that Russian troops were approaching Kherson. It became obvious that my family and I were separated by war. Together we decided not to make any emotional decisions and to wait for the opportunity to evacuate. So, for the next weeks and months, I had to remotely organize help for my family through local volunteers in Kherson. Together with my colleagues I also joined the volunteer movement for Ukraine in Romania and traveled several times to the Isaccea–Orlivka border to deliver humanitarian aid. In Bucharest, we also organized aid for refugees from Ukraine who were transiting through Romania.
Our family had to go through many trials before we were able to decide on and organize our evacuation from Kherson. All of our old life was left there, and now we are going through the refugee experience. As of this writing, Kherson remains occupied by Russian troops and my elderly parents are still there. In Kherson, the cell phone and internet service has been cut off and I am unable to contact them.
Since the start of the war, my research work has practically stopped, and the future has become completely uncertain. My Kherson State University was partially evacuated from Kherson to Western Ukraine, to the city of Ivano-Frankivsk. However, many of my colleagues still stay in the occupied territories under conditions of extreme danger.
It was only after some time that I realized that I had to talk and write about my research topic and its connection to contemporary events. When we study the history of the Holocaust and other genocides, we often emphasize that one of our main goals is to prevent such tragedies in the future. Recent events in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Kharkiv, Sievierodonetsk, Kherson, and many other places in Ukraine have once again shown that we are failing this task. However, it would be a big mistake to give up and stop proving that we can. That is why it is essential to talk about the tragedies of the past in relation to the present. More and more scholars are declaring that Russia’s actions in Ukraine are not only war crimes, but also a crime of genocide in the broadest sense of the legal term. Obviously, in this criminal war, the aggressor country uses not only its military might, but also its information potential. For Russia, a twisted and mythologized history about the Second World War has become a tool of ideological influence on society and a weapon in the information war, seeking justification to the crimes committed. That is why I cannot remain silent. Today, more than ever, it is important that the voices of Ukrainians, in particular of researchers of the Second World War and the history of the Holocaust, be heard both in Ukraine and beyond its borders.
© 2023 the author(s), published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction
- Editorial Introduction
- Open Forum, edited by Tobias Wals, Andrea Petö
- Introduction
- Should There Be One Universal Narrative for Remembering the Holocaust?
- Should There Be One Universal Narrative for Remembering the Holocaust? On a Universal Narrative of the Holocaust and Remembering the Past in Ukraine
- Is Digitalization a Blessing or a Curse for Holocaust Memorialization?
- Who Are the Memory Owners of Memorial Sites? The Question of Memorial Ownership and the Case of Babyn Yar
- How Does Jewish Identity Relate to Modern-Day Ukrainian Identity? Beyond the Refrain of “Do not Divide the Dead”: Othering the Jews as a Technology of Power in the Soviet Union
- How Does Jewish Identity Relate to Modern-Day Ukrainian Identity?
- Perspectives
- A Holocaust Researcher and the War
- Open Forum
- Russian War, Neocolonialism and Holocaust Studies in Ukraine
- Roundtable
- “Never Again!” Roundtable Organized by Eastern European Holocaust Studies and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre
- Interview
- Interview with Karen Jungblut
- Dossier: The Holocaust in Ukraine: Literary Representation, edited by Helena Duffy
- The Holocaust in Ukraine: Literary Representations
- Rachel Seiffert’s A Boy in Winter (2017) and the Literary Construction of Ukraine
- Ukrainians in French Holocaust Literature: Piotr Rawicz’s Blood from the Sky and Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones
- On the Journey Through Ukraine: Representations of the Holocaust in Friedrich Gorenstein’s Traveling Companions
- Is It Right to Talk About the Holocaust in Ukraine Now? An Interview with Jonathan Littell, the Author of The Kindly Ones
- Research Articles
- Unwelcome Return Home: Jews, Anti-Semitism and the Housing Problem in Post-War Kyiv
- Forced Labor Camps for Jews in Reichskommissariat Ukraine: The Exploitation of Jewish Labor within the Holocaust in the East
- More than Meets the Eye – The Intricate Relationship between Selfies at Holocaust Memorial Sites and Their Subsequent Shaming
- Sources, edited by Andrea Löw, Marta Havryshko
- Eyewitness Account of the Nazi Occupation in the South of Ukraine: Diary of a Kherson Resident
- Historiography, edited by Jan Lanicek
- Overview of the Recent Historiography
- Post-Holocaust Transitional Justice in Hungary – Approaches, Disputes, and Debates
- Romania: Historiography on Holocaust and Postwar Justice Studies
- Transitional Justice and the Holocaust in Poland
- Reviews, edited by Elenore Lappin-Eppel, Katarzyna Liszka
- Through the Distorted Mirror. Natalia Romik’s “Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival”
- Sliwa, Joanna. 2021. Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 218 pp. ISBN 978-1-978822-94-8
- Albert Venger, ed. Stalindorfs’kyi Raion: Dokumenty i Materialy, Kyiv: Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Charity, 2021, 340 p.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Introduction
- Editorial Introduction
- Open Forum, edited by Tobias Wals, Andrea Petö
- Introduction
- Should There Be One Universal Narrative for Remembering the Holocaust?
- Should There Be One Universal Narrative for Remembering the Holocaust? On a Universal Narrative of the Holocaust and Remembering the Past in Ukraine
- Is Digitalization a Blessing or a Curse for Holocaust Memorialization?
- Who Are the Memory Owners of Memorial Sites? The Question of Memorial Ownership and the Case of Babyn Yar
- How Does Jewish Identity Relate to Modern-Day Ukrainian Identity? Beyond the Refrain of “Do not Divide the Dead”: Othering the Jews as a Technology of Power in the Soviet Union
- How Does Jewish Identity Relate to Modern-Day Ukrainian Identity?
- Perspectives
- A Holocaust Researcher and the War
- Open Forum
- Russian War, Neocolonialism and Holocaust Studies in Ukraine
- Roundtable
- “Never Again!” Roundtable Organized by Eastern European Holocaust Studies and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre
- Interview
- Interview with Karen Jungblut
- Dossier: The Holocaust in Ukraine: Literary Representation, edited by Helena Duffy
- The Holocaust in Ukraine: Literary Representations
- Rachel Seiffert’s A Boy in Winter (2017) and the Literary Construction of Ukraine
- Ukrainians in French Holocaust Literature: Piotr Rawicz’s Blood from the Sky and Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones
- On the Journey Through Ukraine: Representations of the Holocaust in Friedrich Gorenstein’s Traveling Companions
- Is It Right to Talk About the Holocaust in Ukraine Now? An Interview with Jonathan Littell, the Author of The Kindly Ones
- Research Articles
- Unwelcome Return Home: Jews, Anti-Semitism and the Housing Problem in Post-War Kyiv
- Forced Labor Camps for Jews in Reichskommissariat Ukraine: The Exploitation of Jewish Labor within the Holocaust in the East
- More than Meets the Eye – The Intricate Relationship between Selfies at Holocaust Memorial Sites and Their Subsequent Shaming
- Sources, edited by Andrea Löw, Marta Havryshko
- Eyewitness Account of the Nazi Occupation in the South of Ukraine: Diary of a Kherson Resident
- Historiography, edited by Jan Lanicek
- Overview of the Recent Historiography
- Post-Holocaust Transitional Justice in Hungary – Approaches, Disputes, and Debates
- Romania: Historiography on Holocaust and Postwar Justice Studies
- Transitional Justice and the Holocaust in Poland
- Reviews, edited by Elenore Lappin-Eppel, Katarzyna Liszka
- Through the Distorted Mirror. Natalia Romik’s “Hideouts. The Architecture of Survival”
- Sliwa, Joanna. 2021. Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. 218 pp. ISBN 978-1-978822-94-8
- Albert Venger, ed. Stalindorfs’kyi Raion: Dokumenty i Materialy, Kyiv: Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Charity, 2021, 340 p.
