The parallel is strikingly eerie, and for me, whose father was a Red Army soldier fighting Germans in Ukraine for nearly a year before being taken prisoner of war in May of 1942, they resonate on a personal level. Such a reversal seems unthinkable, and yet, not only is Germany supplying armaments to Ukraine, but it is giving shelter, money and a new life to thousands of refugees, four of whom are my own relatives who fled Kyiv a few weeks after the invasion, and who are now thriving thanks to Germany’s welcome and remarkably generous assistance.
With refugees fleeing Ukraine as this war is raging and annihilating the country, another parallel emerges — an immigration similar, but fundamentally poles apart — the exodus of Ukrainians and Russians following WWII, resulting in millions of Displaced Persons (DP’s) determined to build another life, somewhere, anywhere.
As unlikely as it may seem, I am one of those touched by both flights from the devastation of wars and tyrannical regimes, then because my parents were refugees from the former Soviet Union, and today because I am deeply involved in my relatives’ lives.
Now I want to comment on the similarities and the profound differences that I observed between the two seemingly comparable waves of desperate humanity struggling for survival.
When WWII was over, my father, liberated from the German prison camp in 1943, and my mother who had been deported to Germany from Ukraine to join the ranks of slave labor in 1941, ended up in an American refugee camp for DP’s. During the two years my family lived in the camp barracks, we survived thanks to aid from U.N.R.R.A., an international agency dominated largely by the U.S. , which provided food and other essentials to victims of the war. In 1947, the camps had outlived their purpose, and millions of DP’s were on their own, determined to start over with nothing more than a suitcase and some cherished photographs.
Unlike the conditions encountered by today’s refugees, there were no volunteers organizing greeting centers, no offers of shelter, food, clothing, no translators and interpreters ready to help. Nothing. My father, a skilled mechanic/machinist always found work, we were never hungry, but for the majority of our 10 years of meandering over two continents before coming to the U.S., we lived in the most primitive conditions, at times without indoor plumbing or running water.
Incredibly, I never sensed panic or fear from my parents, nor did I hear anyone else in our circumstances ever complaining about anything. Everyone was grateful to be alive, to have a job, however menial, and to be out of the Soviet Union.
And this is where I see a puzzling difference in the attitudes of the two immigrations. From refugees in Europe and the ones I met in the U.S. I heard complaints about the accommodations — the lights are on in the dormitories, the food is monotonous, the best donated clothes have been picked over, the stipends are not sufficient. Nor are the human efforts spared — the volunteers are not attentive, the free German or French classes are too difficult, the host family has meals at inconvenient times, the washing machine is noisy… and I could go on.
I do not begrudge the assistance that is provided, far from it. I myself am sponsoring my niece despite the fact that after seven months in Switzerland, she was so dissatisfied that she jumped back into the fire only to ask for my help to get her out. Again.
The women and children (and some men) who escaped went through hell; I know what it’s like, and I can’t help thinking that a random throw of dice dictates our destinies — it could have been me, trying to adjust to an unknown way of life as my “displaced” parents did. And indeed, like others they knew in the same circumstances, they achieved “the American dream” while fleeing from the Soviet nightmare.
So what’s the bottom line? Human nature being what it is, there will always be grumbling, but as my niece discovered, one can’t always go home again. Or one shouldn’t. And as my relatives in Germany are proving, one can make a life in a foreign country.
Tatiana Liaugminas was born after WWII to Ukrainian parents, refugees from the former Soviet Union. She’s an American citizen with relatives in Ukraine. She teaches Russian at the University of Dayton.
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