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Fleeing from Ukraine: what the children miss the most

2022-08-10T14:14:30.108Z


The doll, the dog, grandma and grandpa: if you flee to another country, you have to leave a lot behind. What is particularly missing? Photographer Rebecca Hoppé asked Ukrainian children in Hamburg to paint it.


Veronica, 7, misses her school, her grandparents and the things she had to leave on the shelves in her room in Kyiv: her pens, books, trousers, dresses, T-shirts.

Alisa misses her dog Cris.

Vlad his father who stayed in Kyiv.

The 14-year-old is a competitive swimmer and trained at the Olympic base in Ukraine.

Between the end of February and mid-July 2022, around 909,000 people from Ukraine were recorded in the German Central Register of Foreigners, most of them women and girls, 37 percent children and young people under the age of 18.

Previous surveys of war refugees from Ukraine also show that most of the women fled with their children.

This also applies to the five women and their children whom the photographer Rebecca Hoppé met at the end of March in a residential building in Hamburg's Grindel district, where the owners made several one-room apartments available to Ukrainian families until the end of August

.

With the exception of one father, who was allowed to leave the country because he has three underage children, all the men are still in Ukraine, and even a grown-up son was not allowed to leave the country.

Currently none of them have to fight, but that can change at any time.

Hoppé has been accompanying the families for months.

"The pain of war is a constant companion," says the photographer.

"But I experience the parents as very brave, despite their severe homesickness they try to get the best for their families." When they first met, some of the children were very serious and reserved, but now they have the impression that they are aware of the circumstances have settled in accordingly.

"One day I was asked to take passport photos of the children," says Hoppé.

"Without knowing it at the moment, that was the beginning of my portrait series, for which I captured short moments in which the children were lost in their thoughts." She also asked the children to capture in a picture they had painted themselves what they think of when they remember their home.

What do you miss most?

Here the photographer describes what the mothers told her about the flight, life in the Ukraine and the new everyday life in Germany.

Vlad, 14, misses his father

Vlad fled to Hamburg with his mother Agnessa S.

When the war broke out, the sky on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv was full of military pilots and sirens wailed again and again.

The family was very afraid and hid in the basement for nights until they decided to flee.

The father had to stay behind;

he takes care of his own parents, who are now very weak.

The separation hurts the family.

Vlad's married sister fled to Poland and now works there as a doctor's assistant.

She too had to leave her husband behind.

Arrived in Hamburg, chaos reigned, Agnessa S. told the photographer Rebecca Hoppé.

They were given a place in one of the refugee camps, temporarily accommodated in a hotel, until finally they got a room in the Grindelhof.

Vlad is a competitive swimmer, trained at the Olympic base in Ukraine, it was an important part of his life.

On April 20, Vlad was able to prove his talent at the Olympic training center in Hamburg - and was accepted.

Since then he has been training there regularly, otherwise he goes to school, has made friends and is absorbing the German language.

"I still remember when we met," says Hoppé, "Agnessa and Vlad were still staying in the exhibition halls at the time.

Vlad kept repeating the train announcements: 'Next stop Jungfernstieg.

Transition to U1, U2...' He practiced and practiced and practiced.«

Alisa, 6, misses her dog

Alisa and her mother Alina B. are also from Kyiv.

Mother and daughter fled to Hamburg together with Vlad and his mother Agnessa and also found accommodation in the apartment building.

"I felt the greatest desperation with Alina that she had to leave her husband and especially her 21-year-old son behind," reports Hoppé.

"Not being able to have her son with her, not being able to protect her, breaks her heart." The decision to flee was an enormous emotional challenge for the mother.

If her husband – 'my rock', as Alina calls him – hadn't begged her to get himself and their youngest child to safety, she might have stayed.

They placed their son with his grandmother outside of Kyiv.

More than five months have now passed since the escape.

"Full of longing and with a certain humility, Alina shows me videos and photos from a happy time before the war," says Hoppé.

»I see birthday scenes of Alisa excitedly opening presents, home decorated with balloons.

Or how Alisa happily plays in the sea during a family vacation in Odessa and her older brother stays protectively close to her.

I see mother and daughter driving through the streets of Kyiv singing in the car, surrounded by the normal everyday life of a big city.«

Before the war, the family had a detergent business, a thriving business that is now completely idle.

The father continues to live in Kyiv, together with the family dog ​​Cris.

Alisa, who is in first grade, FaceTimes her father and the dog she misses most every day.

Kolja, 3, and Kristina, 8, are missing a friend

Siblings Kristina and Kolya lived with their parents and their 12-year-old brother Denys in Kaniv, a town 150 kilometers south of Kyiv.

The parents traded in fruit and vegetables, harvested apples, peaches, watermelons and tomatoes and sold them in the area.

So the children were constantly in nature.

Grandmother often looked after them.

When the war broke out, they initially had no intention of leaving Ukraine.

But the situation felt increasingly threatening, they told Hoppé, and the noise of the military planes frightened the children.

So they set out at the beginning of March after all.

Arriving at the border, the crossing to Poland took a day, with families queuing to get out of the country.

It was cold, but there were aid stations with food and drinks everywhere.

They then drove from Kraków to Berlin and from Berlin to Hamburg.

They came to a refugee shelter until the mother discovered the temporary accommodation option in the Grindelviertel via Facebook.

With a lot of perseverance and luck, the family found a permanent place to stay.

"When we first met, the children were very serious and reserved," reports Hoppé, "I now have the impression that they have settled in well given the circumstances."

Ivan, 3

On February 24 at 5 a.m. in Kyiv, Ivan's mother, Yuliia P., heard the bangs of Russian artillery.

"I got up, opened the window and heard the bang again," she later told the photographer.

A friend from Stryj wrote to her that the war had started.

She woke up her husband and their two sons, three-year-old Ivan and fifteen-year-old Rostik, and said to them, "Let's pack up and go."

So the family drove off towards the Polish border.

At first they stayed with their friend in Stryj for three days, repeatedly having to go into the basement because of the alarm and the sirens.

At some point, Yuliia P. couldn't take it anymore and was taken to the border.

On March 1, the mother and her sons reached Hamburg, an uncle picked them up and took them to the registration office the next day.

First they came to a shelter where they stayed for a month, then to the dormitory where they are now.

Now they are looking for an apartment on their own, which puts them under a lot of pressure.

Yuliia P. is also unable to say whether she wants to stay in Germany and for how long – especially not as long as her husband is still in Ukraine.

Veronika, 7, misses her room

Veronika lived with her family in Kyiv until the war began, or as her mother Oksana H. puts it: »Until February 24th, 2022, the terrible date for our homeland.«

Her life was filled with many everyday things, reports Oksana H., who has worked at the Supreme Court of Ukraine for more than twelve years.

"I had big plans and prospects of being able to make a significant contribution to our country," she says.

Veronika went to the first grade, full of joy, as her mother says: "Every day she came back happy and told about her friends and favorite teachers." In addition, the girl went to rhythmic gymnastics three times a week for two hours, her absolute favorite sport.

In their free time and on weekends, the family often drove out of town to have barbecues, play games and have fun with friends and relatives.

They usually spent their holidays in Oksana's homeland, the Carpathians.

»Unfortunately, in the early morning of February 24, I was so surprised, confused and scared that I just packed a few papers in a small suitcase, Veronika took her exercise books and we got in the car.

We haven't been to our apartment or our beloved Kyiv since then,' she said.

At first the family stayed in western Ukraine, but when the war events began to develop even more actively, Oksana and her husband decided that the mother would leave Ukraine with Veronika.

Mother and daughter came to Hamburg via Breslau in Poland, where their Kiev friend Alina took them in for the first few days. The girls know each other from gymnastics.

»In the first few days the city seemed so foreign to me, gray and cold.

I cried a lot," says Oksana H., "but the contact with the other people in the house and in the city, their advice and help, and the sincerity in their eyes made me feel more confident in my decision to stay here until the situation in our country is settled.«

The two now live in their own apartment, Veronika goes to school and learns German.

The mother misses her relatives who stayed in Ukraine, her friends, her life there.

Above all, Veronica misses her favorite sport, gymnastics, her grandparents, teachers and friends.

"And she often talks about her books, toys and various household items from our apartment," says the mother.

"But I'm so glad she's safe, sleeping well at night and not having to hide from enemy missiles in an air raid shelter."

And she is grateful for what Germany and the people she met here are doing for the Ukrainians: "We hope that we can give something back to everyone in the future and that this country will be useful!"

This contribution is part of the Global Society project

Expand areaWhat is the Global Society project?

Under the title "Global Society", reporters from

Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe

report on injustices in a globalized world, socio-political challenges and sustainable development.

The reports, analyses, photo series, videos and podcasts appear in a separate section in SPIEGEL's international section.

The project is long-term and is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).

A detailed FAQ with questions and answers about the project can be found here.

AreaWhat does the funding look like in concrete terms?open

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has been supporting the project since 2019 for an initial three years with a total of around 2.3 million euros - around 760,000 euros per year.

In 2021, the project was extended by almost three and a half years until spring 2025 under the same conditions.

AreaIs the journalistic content independent of the foundation?open

Yes.

The editorial content is created without the influence of the Gates Foundation.

AreaDo other media also have similar projects?open

Yes.

With the support of the Gates Foundation, major European media outlets such as The Guardian and El País have set up similar sections on their news sites with Global Development and Planeta Futuro respectively.

Did SPIEGEL already have similar projects? open

In recent years, SPIEGEL has already implemented two projects with the European Journalism Center (EJC) and the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: the "OverMorgen Expedition" on global sustainability goals and the journalistic refugee project "The New Arrivals ", within the framework of which several award-winning multimedia reports on the topics of migration and flight have been created.

Expand areaWhere can I find all publications on the Global Society?

The pieces can be found at SPIEGEL on the Global Society topic page.

lgr

Source: spiegel

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