"When will this war end?"
Created: 03/26/2022, 10:03 am
Selfie In Uzhhorod: Lyuba (left) and Tatyana.
© Photo: Tatyana Pastushenko
Dachau/Kyiv – The Dachauer Nachrichten has twice published excerpts from Tatjana Pastuschenko's war diary.
Now follow four days from the third week of the war.
Tatyana Pastushenko is a historian at the Institute of Ukrainian History at the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv.
In 2007, with a small workshop group in Kyiv, she created biographies of former concentration camp prisoners for the Dachau Memorial Book.
Tatjana Pastuschenko has been associated with the project in Dachau ever since.
Pastushenko fled Kiev with her colleague and friend Lyuba and her five-year-old son Ostap two days before the war began.
Her two husbands stayed to help with the defense.
Tatjana's husband Kostik is actually a philosophy professor.
Tatyana, Ljuba and Ostap live with Ljuba's friend Natasha in Uzhhorod, near the border with Slovakia.
March 18, 23rd day of the war
Kostja called me this morning and woke me up.
It was almost 8 o'clock.
After that I even did gymnastics.
Am I coming back to life?
Six years ago my colleagues Oksana Kis, Kateryna Kobchenko and I presented our book in Mariupol.
I look for a photo from six years ago and watch an interview on TV with an eyewitness who fled Mariupol.
There is no water, not to mention electricity, heating, food.
Bodies all over town and nobody to clean them up and bury them.
Stray dogs begin to eat the corpses...
And in such conditions live several hundred thousand, mostly Russian-speaking people.
Reports from Mariupol residents who managed to flee the city appeared on Facebook: “I managed to escape, but there were so many children and old people there.
Help them!” – the first leitmotif of the reports.
"Everyone has let us down!" - is the second leitmotif.
Even if we manage to save the residents of Mariupol in the near future, we will have to deal with healing them and asking for forgiveness for a long time.
Natascha came back from the market very excited.
How can people shop for clothes, select delicacies, and eagerly buy sweets!
I want to tell her that here in Uzhgorod we are not hungry either, not even a little bit.
After all, we are three women in one household.
Every day we cook something new.
Then I didn't say anything.
Spring is already here in Uzhhorod.
The primroses are blooming.
Today Natascha's friends were visiting.
We drank coffee in the sun in the courtyard.
Natasha said we drink coffee, and at this moment in Mariupol people are dying of hunger or because they are being bombed.
After dinner I bought vegetable and herb seeds for mom.
No more deliveries are made to Puchowka, only the most important groceries.
March 19, 24th day of the war
I would like to briefly quote what Kostik wrote.
Usually he tells almost nothing about himself.
But a couple of times he wrote a bit more.
On March 13th: “Aside from the nervous tension of waiting and the terrible calamity that surrounds us, I am surrounded only by soldier jokes and laughter.
It's a pity that I can't talk about it and document more.
Maybe sometime later.
I continue to give opera lessons.
I even "fed" my young comrades Leporello's aria and the finale from Don Giovanni... We agreed to go to the opera after the war."
Kostik wrote the second message on March 19.
It must be said that Kostik has been in his unit since February 24 and has hardly moved in Kyiv.
That's why he was so impressed by today's trip: “Today I drove through Kyiv in a fast car.
The impressions are strong.
Kyiv has the hairs on the back of its neck raised and is ready for battle with all its hedgehog barricades, tiered defenses and roadblocks.
Documents are checked at every roadblock, and you can’t get any further without a password...
In some places in the park trenches have been dug for trench warfare.
In short, the capital is preparing for battles with the orcs... The car was a Lexus and the driver was a professional racing driver.
We listened to Ukrainian modern patriotic music.
It was like sitting next to The Stig on Top Gear!
The music and a bowl of garlic borscht he ate at his mother's in Darnitsa district made this race colorful and so Ukrainian.”
March 20th, 25th day of the war
Today, one could say, was a routine wartime Sunday for us.
In the morning there was coffee and at the same time news over the phone and on the television.
Call the relatives.
Go to the church.
(...) When will this war end and how many more children and adults will die?
"There is no decision about Mariupol," say the experts.
That means everyone will die there.
March 22nd, 27th day of the war
A month has passed today since we got on the train, said goodbye to our husbands and left Kyiv.
I woke up early in the morning at 5am and couldn't go back to sleep.
I thought about turning on some music, but I couldn't.
No songs, no instrumental music.
Especially not the pieces of music that I particularly like.
Everything is reminiscent of life before.
A little distraction from the war news: Ljuba doing gymnastics in the courtyard of her current home.
© Photo: Tatyana Pastushenko
Everyone is helping in the war against the Russians: Ukrainian women weaving camouflage nets.
Photos (3): Tatyana Pastushenko © Photo: Tatyana Pastushenko