I have kinda adopted one teen like this. I just really make sure that he has everything he needs, new backpack, school and cooking essentials. He introduced me as his sister. I'm so proud of him.
The answer is to be that person. It's too easy, I well know, to stay cynical and bitter, to shut yourself away and marinate in loathing for what humanity has become. But the world will only be better when we choose to make it better how and when we can.
Listened to a story of a young Ukrainian mother, preparing her daughter for school. She got her daughter a backpack with a bunch of pictures on it, including an airplane. Her daughter asked why she got a backpack with a picture of a bomber on it. The mum held it in, but had a breakdown afterwards, because something as simple as an airplane was tainted for what should be the most innocent time of a child's life.
EDIT: For those asking, we should be calling our Reps and telling them we support sending troops to Ukraine. The only way to fight a bully, is directly.
What is there to do? The goverment in my homecountry has lied themselves into office once more leading to the rise of the russian aligned AFD since all established parties fail the average person year after year and all they do are bandaid fixes that at least get tiny to negligable successes. Politicans only act in short term and selfintrest selling out to the highest bidder. They use the same strategies, the same rhetoric they always have to rally the ignorant and uneducated behind there selfish elitest goals yet the average voter falls for it giving power to the anti-democratic elitests. There is nothing i can do anymore i voted, protested and am politically active in a left leaning party on a local level and even my own party dismisses and marginalizes a lot of issues people my age have. Democracy is rotten to the core with corruption(sorry lobbyism) and there are no levers left for people like me because the majority just falls for the easy to digest anti-immigrant, anti-eu and anti-"woke" rhetoric voting against their own intrests whilst mindlessly chanting their slogans.
Call your representative. Today, tomorrow, Monday. All of next week. And the week after. Write them one letter a week make them rue the day they thought you would leave them alone.
"Hey let's vote to send other people to die! That will make us not cowards."
You are more than welcome to go volunteer to help anyway you can. I'm sure they would love to give you a gun to go fight and if you are to old or weak or scared to fight then I'm sure they have other stuff for you to do. But don't vote to send other people to go do it for you. And definitely don't tall about how doing so makes you not a coward. That makes you a bigger coward than if you just did nothing.
As a former history teacher I can confirm. It was brutal teaching about the constitution last school year. My students had to learn what constitutional crisis meant.
Here shows more pictures of this boy and provides the following:
The story of Roman Oleksiv from Lviv has become a true symbol of childhood resilience during the war. He was seven years old when, during a Russian missile strike on Vinnytsia in 2022, he suffered 45% internal and 35% external burns, a broken arm, a severed muscle in his right leg, and shrapnel wounds to his head. Tragically, his mother, who was with him at the time of the terrorist attack, was killed on the spot.
Roman's condition was critical, and doctors at the time were cautious about his prognosis. "Doctors weren't sure that Roma would even make it to Dresden — his condition was that severe," recalls his father, Yaroslav Oleksiv, about the first days after the missile strike.
Roman was urgently transported to Germany by private medical aircraft. After a year of intensive treatment and more than 30 surgeries, the boy was able to stand on his feet again. Today, not only has Roman learned to walk again, but he has also returned to ballroom dancing, a passion he had pursued from an early age.
Currently, Roman and his father Yaroslav spend most of their time in Dresden, where the boy is undergoing an intensive course of treatment and rehabilitation at one of Germany's largest burn centers — Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus Dresden.
"We will overcome everything, I am sure of it — it just doesn't all happen quickly," says Yaroslav Oleksiv with confidence.
Man I didn’t even think of that till seeing this comment. Dresden was engulfed in flames, a perfect storm of weather and man’s inhumanity to man.
“the Allied bombing of Dresden on the night of 13–15 February 1945 did create a true firestorm — one of the most extreme examples in history — with hurricane-force winds and temperatures reaching ≈1,000 °C (1,800 °F).”
Maybe it started as practical? Like, there were so many burn victims in one place that the place needed to be built. I'd say we are all speculating, right now, anyways.
My grandma was on the last train out of Dresden. Her diary recounts how the back end of the train was on fire all the way to Stuttgart.
And when she did get to Stuttgart, she had nothing. She lost contact with her family and didn't see anyone for decades. Which that's an absolutely crazy story in itself that I witnessed.
The TL;DR of that story is that she found her sister who was also looking for her. She went to a church in New York to get more information, only for the pastor to come out with her sister in arm because she was there looking for her, too. Then my grandma learned that the survivors of her family also fled to Stuttgart, and they lived only two blocks away, never running into each other. So yeah, that's how I met my great-aunt for the first time, at the church.
Glad they made out of it all, I couldn’t imagine their joy when they reunited.
Those bombings are nightmare material man. I remember Dan Carlin from Hardcore History talking about the Tokyo bombings or the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You had people having to leave their shelters because of the intense heat sucking out the oxygen from the room. He talked about how people ran out only for them to find themselves stuck on the road as if in quicksand. It was the asphalt melting!
Ehhh... I also left out the part where my grandma still retained her Nazi opinions, that my father married a Jewish woman, and this all happened while grandma was living with us.
My grandmother was a blitz baby. Extremely English, to an almost painful degree. It was a huge leap for her when, at the end of her life, she said she would like to be of those people who hug when they say goodbye to people. Well done, Nanny...
But yeah. You just didn't ask her opinion on "The Jews" or her feelings about Lemuria or foreigners.
Because really, she was ultimately just a quiet housewife who only ever left the house for groceries and a weekly craft group. It's not like she was making online neo-nazi content. She was terrified of anyone espousing unconventional political beliefs (she was far too English to ever tolerate the rhetorical style of the modern right-wing, too emotive), so... pffdbt. Okay, Nanny. Those damn Lemurians and their plans. Yes. It's very scary travelling, best you not try. How's your cat going? You got some new crystals? Oh, sweet!
What I find especially sad is nearly a century later the US was using "shake and bake" tactics to get around phosphorous/napalm bans in middle east wars.
Hell even just a few decades later we were using similiar carpet bombing & other tactics in Laos/Vietnam & Cambodia in the 60's/70's which have lasting consequences to this day on civilians:
And that's just some of what was declassified after decades, as scary as drones are in some ways they are at least an improvement over the insane bombing campaigns the US was carrying out for decades all over the world.
I grew up thru a civil war in Bosnia and saw lots of people die infront of me.
It's not resilience. It's a lack of understanding of consequences. 30 years later, I have significant issues that I'm just discovering and starting to deal with
I visited Bosnia when I was 7 (my parents were religious and wanted to visit Medjugorje) and saw all the bombed out buildings in Mostar. Some tanks even escorted our bus across because it still wasn't safe at the time. It gave me more appreciation for the safety I've generally experienced in my life. Can't imagine what it was like to be in that same location just a short while prior.
Learn history or be doomed to repeat it. I always thought that was just a catchy way to get people to study, or whatever. Never thought I would see the 1930-40's playing out again.
I saw something about that it takes 3 generations for war to be forgotten, since the grandparents that lived through the last one are now dead and don't tell the stories. Seems about accurate for us right now.
Might me.. my grandparents told me everything about the dictators they endured, I also studied WWII and that was enough for me to understand that moral, ethics and empathy is not only important but vital for societies and nations. Now you tell me where the hell is the moral compass of citizens and politicians
I was once told by a vet the oil is all bought and paid for in the Middle East. He said, “you wanna know why we fought a 20+ year war? Politicians all own companies that either do the work or own a company that owns a company that does all the contract work at places like Bagram and other large military bases. How much does it cost to dump 1000 Porta potties a week in the states? A couple tens of thousands of dollars? And you can bid a contract to do it for 3 million a week to the government. They’ll say yes as it’s not there money… it’s yours. This is true all the way to Tim Hortons, the companies shipping in materials to build, the food, everything. All owned by a company that a politician has their hand in.”
I used to think the issue was just a lack of access to information. That people had to go to the library and read to be educated on these things and that the Internet and having the entire wealth of the worlds knowledge at our finger tips for the first time in human history would change all that.
I wish I could go back to believing that comfortable lie.
“Learn” being the most important word there. Speaking at least to the US, we are not educating the younger generations on what history really looks like and our entire education system is actively being made a lot worse… ensuring these atrocities are destined to be repeated.
I work with a dude like this (He's alone with these thoughts and none of us are accepting of his viewpoints) It is absolutely asinine to hear him try to defend his Holocaust denial position. These people are a different breed of crazy.
Eisenhower pretty much predicted that would happen, so he made sure that it was documented extensively during and after rescuing the survivors. Wasn’t enough unfortunately.
I think we've proven now that no amount of documenting is enough, the contrarian poison will always affect people and slowly grow. The fight for facts and intellectualism is constant.
Manufacturing a conspiracy is often easier than confronting the ugly truths about humanity. That, and it's beneficial to those that are pushing a narrative.
I don’t think anybody reasonable would actually deny it happened. And anybody delusional enough to believe it would not have had the means to spread the idea back then: nowadays every idiot can speak on the Internet, but this conspiracy theory predates the Internet by a long time.
The idea is being spread by Nazis and antisemites who know very well that it’s not true. And unfortunately they are playing the long game, and the game gets easier and easier for them. Nowadays you still have living people who saw it with their eyes. For a long time you’ll still have people who met such witnesses.
But a hundred, two hundred years from now? It’ll be distant history. A lot of people won’t have an opinion on whether it happened or not.
Yeah and it's getting from bad to worse now due to lots of misleading fake news and AI slops. It's getting harder and harder to know what's real and what's not. Imagine 100 or 200 years in the future. If we are still around, that is.
I hate to say it, but I think the saying should go Learn history, because we are doomed to repeat it. We don't learn, we recreate the same atrocities over and over.
Politicians learn history, not to avoid to repeat horrors, but to learn how to stay in power and get richer. Read the 10 steps to dictatorship. A short article from a NewYork Time journalist during bush jr time. They just don't care much about kids, life in general, as they don't take much risk themselves declaring war.
Trump is now trying to pressure Ukraine into giving up territory to Russia. That’s a direct parallel to handing the Sudetenland to Hitler in 1938 - back then people also thought that “a little bit of land in exchange for peace” would solve everything. In reality it only freed the aggressor’s hands and led to a much bigger war.
This is exactly what you’re talking about: we’re once again watching someone try to rewrite history using the same methods. We already know from the history books how this usually ends and what to expect if he succeeds - the only question is whether we choose to pretend we’ve forgotten.
This is very much the case. The Vietnam experience taught the US government that letting journalists have a degree of freedom to speak openly with people and film whatever they wanted was a huge PR disaster for them. Come the Gulf War, the next major show of force they were much more controlling of the journalists and I remember a lot of it just being like giving them grainy footage of things being hit by rockets.
Current Israel/Palestine conflict is the most deadly war in history for journalists. 247 at last count. Majority are Palestinian.
Our species is capable of amazing things in our age of information gathering. We have everything necessary to learn from the past mistakes and build a brighter future.
Unfortunately the future requires a deity to promise its existence. And the only deity left for humans is selfish greed.
Our capacity to form useful tools to dominate our environment is not the same as the capacity to learn how to stop needing to. The failed human experiment will eventually perish for a being that wouldn’t allow this to happen after millennia of harsh lessons.
The story of Roman Oleksiv from Lviv has become a true symbol of childhood resilience during the war. He was seven years old when, during a Russian missile strike on Vinnytsia in 2022, he suffered 45% internal and 35% external burns, a broken arm, a severed muscle in his right leg, and shrapnel wounds to his head. Tragically, his mother, who was with him at the time of the terrorist attack, was killed on the spot.
Roman's condition was critical, and doctors at the time were cautious about his prognosis. "Doctors weren't sure that Roma would even make it to Dresden — his condition was that severe," recalls his father, Yaroslav Oleksiv, about the first days after the missile strike.
Roman was urgently transported to Germany by private medical aircraft. After a year of intensive treatment and more than 30 surgeries, the boy was able to stand on his feet again. Today, not only has Roman learned to walk again, but he has also returned to ballroom dancing, a passion he had pursued from an early age.
Currently, Roman and his father Yaroslav spend most of their time in Dresden, where the boy is undergoing an intensive course of treatment and rehabilitation at one of Germany's largest burn centers — Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus Dresden.
"We will overcome everything, I am sure of it — it just doesn't all happen quickly," says Yaroslav Oleksiv with confidence.
And the AfD party in Germany is mad he's there and wants to send him back to Ukraine and hopes Russia wins the war. I'd be curious to hear their response to his words.
Unfortunately they are also one of the rising political parties in Germany so the question is why is a party of actual Nazi's in the country that does almost everything to show why Nazi's shouldn't exist are rising to providence.
Problem is, these stories never come from the people making the decisions. Those pussies would never put themselves in the position to take the risks that these poor people have to.
We have these stories from every war, every invasion, every genocide. The people in charge either don't listen, don't care, or are motivated by these stories.
Humanity somehow let the least human people run the government and lead the armies.
We have done this in Germany for 70 years and now we have the new Nazi party in polls at about 40%.
Remembering war crimes is useless until the politics act for the broader main of people, otherwise they will start voting for the bigges assholes available (see Trump in the USA).
What a sense of dignity and courage this young man possesses. What a strong and gentle demeanor, to put everyone to tears. Wish I could have heard everything he had to say
I understand you used the term “man” in your comment out of respect for the courage and maturity they've shown in speaking about this issue. Still, I think we need to be careful with the words we use when talking about this atrocity to avoid misrepresenting it.
This person is not a man, but a child. A boy. A kid. They are not an adult or any related term in any sense, and it's important not to lose that distinction because it highlights the extent to which what is currently happening in Ukraine is not just bad or wrong, but evil. The actions of the Russian government and their soldiers are vile beyond measure because they target our most vulnerable. People who should be sheltered and protected, not because they can’t face the world and its cruelty, but because they shouldn't have to.
Again, this isn't a callout of the original commenter or a claim that they're wrong for wanting to express respect for this brave individual. It's simply a comment on how the words we use when speaking of events shape our memories of those events, and we cannot allow ourselves to forget or efface the fact that the Russian government is actively killing and maiming Ukrainian children as a matter of policy, not accident.
Ignore the other guy, it is an important distinction. This kids been through some real hellish shit and it had made him mature beyond his years (I am willing to bet), but he is still a child, forever traumatized by something utterly pointless.
Awareness is a good thing to have and you have it.
Thank you for this comment. Why this distinction is necessary becomes very clear when you think about it, but I needed a reminder again of that it exists in the first place. It's wild how easily you forget these kind of things. Reminders like that are important, no matter how "obvious" the content, because like you said, we get used to certain types of wording over time... but we cannot forget the realities behind them.
Simply awful, his whole life torn apart and for what?
For a monster who is near the end of his life.
I really dont get why all these wealthy old men dont just retire on a beach somewhere and enjoy their wealth until they die since they're so close to the end.
Well, Putin specifically would likely be arrested the instant he set foot in most countries with beaches due to the ICC warrants. So I imagine he is keen on avoiding that.
Yes. I was so disgusted by all the "don't blame the soldiers, blame Putin!" talk early on. Those soldiers were the ones out there murdering and gang raping civilians, and mutilating children. Those soldiers and their families who support them back home are as much to blame for this as he is.
And every country allowing them to continue this war (every single damn one, except maybe the countries that don't have enough influence and power to intercede).
11-year-old Roman Oleksiv, who survived the Russian missile attack on Vinnytsia, spoke at the European Parliament during a documentary screening about Ukrainian children. He shared the story of losing his mother in the attack. The boy survived severe burns through 36 surgeries and long rehabilitation.
His story moved the translator to tears as she interpreted his words for the audience. Despite everything, Roman continues to study, dance, and make music, inspiring others with his message: “Never give up. Together, we are strong.”
Most people don't know this, but russia forcibly kidnapped around 20 THOUSAND children from orphanages in Ukraine. They were spread around the country to lose tracks, some were sent to military camps.
Twenty. Thousand. Stolen. Kids. That are now being indoctrinated to hate their homeland or even make them forget where they are from. Oh and I should mention those are identified kids that we know of, the real numbers are probably way more sad
And then people online are surprised why we hate them this much
edit: there's a huge wikipedia article about it and I link wiki because ruski bots are in full force here and wiki has a lot of outside links including OSCE. Obviously most reporting on the issue would be from Ukraine but since you can't 'trust' ukrainian sources here's a plethora of others or you can just google it yourself.
Usually I don’t like to comment on these things because I’m russian but you’ve drawn a right parallel and I have something to share with you.
So for quite some years now kids in schools and students im universities were subjected to basically “patriotism lessons” which was dumb but a little funny. But now they’re hanging banners with phrases like “everyone is an enemy of russia and they want to destroy us with their liberties and tolerance” or… “The future is given in struggle and our struggle is one of good versus evil” My struggle my ass, fuckers spent last 20 years telling me that Hitler was fucking evil and for what
Holly fuck this is beyond dark….. my country “leaders” are disgusting.
I will spread this article, best i can do sorry…. Thats… really dark….
Obviously news here doesn’t tell anything. At all, seriously. All you can hear on news is whining about drones, how Zelenski is bad and how Trump with Putin is good… and some people believe all that!
I knew we are the bad guys but fuck… it’s horrific… I need to think about that…. Again thanks for info.
Not just orphanages! There were many cases where the schools would tell parents that they could send their kids to summer camps for safety from bombing, a place they could be kids again, that it was involved with the schools, that would come back. Then their children were sent away further and further into Russia.
I don't blame the translator. That's a difficult thing to hear from a young kid. But it's so important the world hears it so we fully understand the war atrocities going on around the world.
I do interpreting like this, it's a real art not to show emotion when you are translating something intense, there are tricks but they don't always work.
i dont care if he does or not. i just want consequences for people that do shitty things, especially the shittiest things that humanity can and cant even think of
He doesn’t. If we don’t met out the justice ourselves (humanity), That man will die peacefully in his sleep never facing any consequences for the evil he is inflicting upon the world.
As an interpreter myself, I thought I could keep my emotions in check; but when it comes to babies and children, the faucet is ON. The lingering sadness and guilt really messed me up.
Same, I was just interpreting this week, this guy was telling some tough stuff from his life, and it's super hard keeping it together. I have a trick where I tense up my abs and the effort seems to take my focus off the emotions, but it doesn't always work 100%.
...but RSF are sponsored by UAE so united nations and the entirety of western media will keep their tongues shoved up their asses about mass slaughters of indigenous population in Sudan done by arab colonizers going on for 15 years
They maimed this child so badly, that I thought he was a grown man in bad makeup. I hope the oligarchs get burnt to a crisp over this dogshit "military operation."
Mostly, this is all hidden and reported on late at night when anyone it might influence to support Ukraine is asleep. By design. Personalizing this war is at the top of the list of things the right DO NOT want.
It hurts my heart and boils my blood that the president of the United States is getting in bed with the monsters who did this to this boy and the many thousands of other kids and their families...
T_T everyone cries yet nobody has balls to do anything that actually stops this. Let’s keep on listening to trump and being concerned, amiright?
Year after year for more than a decade this shit happens to my country and all I see is this kind of charade
Hey, West. If you're scared of nuclear weapons from a coward and fascist nation more than a world, where a children have to endure all this and suffer like this kid, I have a news for you. Y'all have no spine. And that's cruel.
The level of narcissism one must have, to be responsible for the harming of others, especially children, and to be able to sleep at night, is astounding. All of the Putins, Trumps, Netanyahu's, and others of that ilk need to be held accountable before they die of old age, or in Trump's case, Alzheimers.
Remember, Putin started this war, taking advantage of Ukraine's lack of nuclear weapons. Ukraine gave away their weapons under Russia's promise of never attacking them.
The New Yorker has a short documentary about the translators from the Yugoslavia post-war trials (ICTY). Being part of a trial has a longtime effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JppVGKykkvc
To protect our future we need to understand and recognise the mistakes of the past. Putin and the appeasement of him by agent Trump is one of the most terrifying things I have had to witness. As a Brit it is clear that the two of them are looking to carve up Europe.
That child is 11?! And looks so empty, talking like this is the most normal thing in the world. No child deserves this.
And imagine there must be thousands of others like him, basically a whole generation destroyed. Absolutely heartbreaking
I have kinda adopted one teen like this. I just really make sure that he has everything he needs, new backpack, school and cooking essentials. He introduced me as his sister. I'm so proud of him.
People like you make it hard for me to remain a cynical bastard. If more people were like you, I would be able to shed the cynical armour.
Good show. Damn good show.
The answer is to be that person. It's too easy, I well know, to stay cynical and bitter, to shut yourself away and marinate in loathing for what humanity has become. But the world will only be better when we choose to make it better how and when we can.
Thank you for being a helper. The world needs more like you
This is what half of America wants to reward the Russians for. (and the other half doesn't really give a shit if they do).
And there are ghouls who support that state
Listened to a story of a young Ukrainian mother, preparing her daughter for school. She got her daughter a backpack with a bunch of pictures on it, including an airplane. Her daughter asked why she got a backpack with a picture of a bomber on it. The mum held it in, but had a breakdown afterwards, because something as simple as an airplane was tainted for what should be the most innocent time of a child's life.
He’s been bombed, talking in front of 20 people probably seems insignificant in comparison.
https://preview.redd.it/10w0u6s4nl6g1.jpeg?width=918&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c2bab00d7035b28f1dcd1c52125100a44c2252fa
We are far from helpless. We are cowards.
EDIT: For those asking, we should be calling our Reps and telling them we support sending troops to Ukraine. The only way to fight a bully, is directly.
What is there to do? The goverment in my homecountry has lied themselves into office once more leading to the rise of the russian aligned AFD since all established parties fail the average person year after year and all they do are bandaid fixes that at least get tiny to negligable successes. Politicans only act in short term and selfintrest selling out to the highest bidder. They use the same strategies, the same rhetoric they always have to rally the ignorant and uneducated behind there selfish elitest goals yet the average voter falls for it giving power to the anti-democratic elitests. There is nothing i can do anymore i voted, protested and am politically active in a left leaning party on a local level and even my own party dismisses and marginalizes a lot of issues people my age have. Democracy is rotten to the core with corruption(sorry lobbyism) and there are no levers left for people like me because the majority just falls for the easy to digest anti-immigrant, anti-eu and anti-"woke" rhetoric voting against their own intrests whilst mindlessly chanting their slogans.
What would you have the common folk do to stop the war in ukraine?
Call your representative. Today, tomorrow, Monday. All of next week. And the week after. Write them one letter a week make them rue the day they thought you would leave them alone.
Or not up to you.
I dont mean to sound glum, but you know who are "representatives" are, right?
Lol, you actually think they fucking listen to those calls? Even if they did, they just laugh and then vote alongside their largest backer.
Donate money. Fight the information war. Support pro-Ukrainian politicians.
For any Canadians reading this - our Gov has a website dedicated to support and resources - hoping there's a few more out there as well
i hope links are allowed
CISSA Red Cross UNRA and HC are all available to be supported here
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/ukraine-measures/help.html
Donate to help Ukraine defend themselves. Raise awareness. Literally do anything that is beyond clicking "like".
Get out of here with that stuff dude.
"Hey let's vote to send other people to die! That will make us not cowards."
You are more than welcome to go volunteer to help anyway you can. I'm sure they would love to give you a gun to go fight and if you are to old or weak or scared to fight then I'm sure they have other stuff for you to do. But don't vote to send other people to go do it for you. And definitely don't tall about how doing so makes you not a coward. That makes you a bigger coward than if you just did nothing.
As a former history teacher I can confirm. It was brutal teaching about the constitution last school year. My students had to learn what constitutional crisis meant.
Here shows more pictures of this boy and provides the following:
Here is a longer statement from this boy.
How morbidly ironic that he is in Dresden now, a city that got completely obliterated during the Second World War. We truly never learn.
Man I didn’t even think of that till seeing this comment. Dresden was engulfed in flames, a perfect storm of weather and man’s inhumanity to man.
“the Allied bombing of Dresden on the night of 13–15 February 1945 did create a true firestorm — one of the most extreme examples in history — with hurricane-force winds and temperatures reaching ≈1,000 °C (1,800 °F).”
Why do you think one of Germany's largest burn centers is there?
Yeah it’s not ironic really but nonetheless interesting
I'd say symbolic rather than ironic. Irony would be if the burn center was there before it became a fiery hell on earth.
Yeah, my brain just defaults to irony but yes it’s why more symbolic than anything else. Sad we just can’t learn as a species
Maybe it started as practical? Like, there were so many burn victims in one place that the place needed to be built. I'd say we are all speculating, right now, anyways.
I think irony would be if the burn center was there BEFORE the bombing.
My grandma was on the last train out of Dresden. Her diary recounts how the back end of the train was on fire all the way to Stuttgart.
And when she did get to Stuttgart, she had nothing. She lost contact with her family and didn't see anyone for decades. Which that's an absolutely crazy story in itself that I witnessed.
The TL;DR of that story is that she found her sister who was also looking for her. She went to a church in New York to get more information, only for the pastor to come out with her sister in arm because she was there looking for her, too. Then my grandma learned that the survivors of her family also fled to Stuttgart, and they lived only two blocks away, never running into each other. So yeah, that's how I met my great-aunt for the first time, at the church.
Glad they made out of it all, I couldn’t imagine their joy when they reunited.
Those bombings are nightmare material man. I remember Dan Carlin from Hardcore History talking about the Tokyo bombings or the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You had people having to leave their shelters because of the intense heat sucking out the oxygen from the room. He talked about how people ran out only for them to find themselves stuck on the road as if in quicksand. It was the asphalt melting!
Ehhh... I also left out the part where my grandma still retained her Nazi opinions, that my father married a Jewish woman, and this all happened while grandma was living with us.
Heh. That's kinda funny, though.
My grandmother was a blitz baby. Extremely English, to an almost painful degree. It was a huge leap for her when, at the end of her life, she said she would like to be of those people who hug when they say goodbye to people. Well done, Nanny...
But yeah. You just didn't ask her opinion on "The Jews" or her feelings about Lemuria or foreigners.
Because really, she was ultimately just a quiet housewife who only ever left the house for groceries and a weekly craft group. It's not like she was making online neo-nazi content. She was terrified of anyone espousing unconventional political beliefs (she was far too English to ever tolerate the rhetorical style of the modern right-wing, too emotive), so... pffdbt. Okay, Nanny. Those damn Lemurians and their plans. Yes. It's very scary travelling, best you not try. How's your cat going? You got some new crystals? Oh, sweet!
Most Americans don’t even know what Dresden is or what happened. Reading slaughterhouse was my first experience and I did that after high school.
What I find especially sad is nearly a century later the US was using "shake and bake" tactics to get around phosphorous/napalm bans in middle east wars.
Hell even just a few decades later we were using similiar carpet bombing & other tactics in Laos/Vietnam & Cambodia in the 60's/70's which have lasting consequences to this day on civilians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barrel_Roll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu
And that's just some of what was declassified after decades, as scary as drones are in some ways they are at least an improvement over the insane bombing campaigns the US was carrying out for decades all over the world.
Just read Slaughterhouse-Five a few weeks ago, immediately thought of that. Mind blowing stuff.
It's a great book, and a strange one. It really opened my sense of what a novel could be when I read it as a young person.
I grew up thru a civil war in Bosnia and saw lots of people die infront of me.
It's not resilience. It's a lack of understanding of consequences. 30 years later, I have significant issues that I'm just discovering and starting to deal with
I visited Bosnia when I was 7 (my parents were religious and wanted to visit Medjugorje) and saw all the bombed out buildings in Mostar. Some tanks even escorted our bus across because it still wasn't safe at the time. It gave me more appreciation for the safety I've generally experienced in my life. Can't imagine what it was like to be in that same location just a short while prior.
These stories are the things we need to save for future generations
We have lots of examples from history(unfortunately). In video(ww2 and ww1 and many wars after that) and written from way older times.
As you can see,nothing has changed.
Learn history or be doomed to repeat it. I always thought that was just a catchy way to get people to study, or whatever. Never thought I would see the 1930-40's playing out again.
"The only thing we have learned from history is that we don't learn from history. If we did there would have only been one war."
I saw something about that it takes 3 generations for war to be forgotten, since the grandparents that lived through the last one are now dead and don't tell the stories. Seems about accurate for us right now.
Might me.. my grandparents told me everything about the dictators they endured, I also studied WWII and that was enough for me to understand that moral, ethics and empathy is not only important but vital for societies and nations. Now you tell me where the hell is the moral compass of citizens and politicians
The antebellum south needs to be told this, because I don’t see their bitterness at losing the civil war waning anytime soon.
i mean look at this article from 10 years ago..
https://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/50473
its never going to change
War is profitable. There are bad actors who purposely feed dissent / outrage so that the military/ industrial complex can continue to get money
I was once told by a vet the oil is all bought and paid for in the Middle East. He said, “you wanna know why we fought a 20+ year war? Politicians all own companies that either do the work or own a company that owns a company that does all the contract work at places like Bagram and other large military bases. How much does it cost to dump 1000 Porta potties a week in the states? A couple tens of thousands of dollars? And you can bid a contract to do it for 3 million a week to the government. They’ll say yes as it’s not there money… it’s yours. This is true all the way to Tim Hortons, the companies shipping in materials to build, the food, everything. All owned by a company that a politician has their hand in.”
I used to think the issue was just a lack of access to information. That people had to go to the library and read to be educated on these things and that the Internet and having the entire wealth of the worlds knowledge at our finger tips for the first time in human history would change all that.
I wish I could go back to believing that comfortable lie.
Unfortunately we've just gotten access to magnitudes more disinformation at the same time.
This is extremely naive. Wars happen because people with disproportionate power benefit or believe they will benefit.
“Learn” being the most important word there. Speaking at least to the US, we are not educating the younger generations on what history really looks like and our entire education system is actively being made a lot worse… ensuring these atrocities are destined to be repeated.
Bodies for the fire
Count the bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums
What I find shocking is there are subset of people who deny atrocities ever occurred. Such as "holocaust never happened" and such.
I work with a dude like this (He's alone with these thoughts and none of us are accepting of his viewpoints) It is absolutely asinine to hear him try to defend his Holocaust denial position. These people are a different breed of crazy.
Eisenhower pretty much predicted that would happen, so he made sure that it was documented extensively during and after rescuing the survivors. Wasn’t enough unfortunately.
I think we've proven now that no amount of documenting is enough, the contrarian poison will always affect people and slowly grow. The fight for facts and intellectualism is constant.
Manufacturing a conspiracy is often easier than confronting the ugly truths about humanity. That, and it's beneficial to those that are pushing a narrative.
I don’t think anybody reasonable would actually deny it happened. And anybody delusional enough to believe it would not have had the means to spread the idea back then: nowadays every idiot can speak on the Internet, but this conspiracy theory predates the Internet by a long time.
The idea is being spread by Nazis and antisemites who know very well that it’s not true. And unfortunately they are playing the long game, and the game gets easier and easier for them. Nowadays you still have living people who saw it with their eyes. For a long time you’ll still have people who met such witnesses.
But a hundred, two hundred years from now? It’ll be distant history. A lot of people won’t have an opinion on whether it happened or not.
Yeah and it's getting from bad to worse now due to lots of misleading fake news and AI slops. It's getting harder and harder to know what's real and what's not. Imagine 100 or 200 years in the future. If we are still around, that is.
There are people fine with repeating it unfortunately
I hate to say it, but I think the saying should go Learn history, because we are doomed to repeat it. We don't learn, we recreate the same atrocities over and over.
Politicians learn history, not to avoid to repeat horrors, but to learn how to stay in power and get richer. Read the 10 steps to dictatorship. A short article from a NewYork Time journalist during bush jr time. They just don't care much about kids, life in general, as they don't take much risk themselves declaring war.
Trump is now trying to pressure Ukraine into giving up territory to Russia. That’s a direct parallel to handing the Sudetenland to Hitler in 1938 - back then people also thought that “a little bit of land in exchange for peace” would solve everything. In reality it only freed the aggressor’s hands and led to a much bigger war.
This is exactly what you’re talking about: we’re once again watching someone try to rewrite history using the same methods. We already know from the history books how this usually ends and what to expect if he succeeds - the only question is whether we choose to pretend we’ve forgotten.
We sanitize a lot of things especially news in order to not upset people.
Lessons learned from Vietnam, once the pictures/videos started showing up in the news the public started pushing back and protesting.
A free and honest and impartial press is so important to democracy.
The press is compromised mostly now. The only way to counter corp media is for independent citizens journalism and the Internet.
This is very much the case. The Vietnam experience taught the US government that letting journalists have a degree of freedom to speak openly with people and film whatever they wanted was a huge PR disaster for them. Come the Gulf War, the next major show of force they were much more controlling of the journalists and I remember a lot of it just being like giving them grainy footage of things being hit by rockets.
Current Israel/Palestine conflict is the most deadly war in history for journalists. 247 at last count. Majority are Palestinian.
Our species is capable of amazing things in our age of information gathering. We have everything necessary to learn from the past mistakes and build a brighter future.
Unfortunately the future requires a deity to promise its existence. And the only deity left for humans is selfish greed.
Our capacity to form useful tools to dominate our environment is not the same as the capacity to learn how to stop needing to. The failed human experiment will eventually perish for a being that wouldn’t allow this to happen after millennia of harsh lessons.
Here you go.
Here more of the story of the boy in OP's video:
And the AfD party in Germany is mad he's there and wants to send him back to Ukraine and hopes Russia wins the war. I'd be curious to hear their response to his words.
Those Nazis can get absolutely fucked. Maybe they should go serve on the Russian front lines.
Unfortunately they are also one of the rising political parties in Germany so the question is why is a party of actual Nazi's in the country that does almost everything to show why Nazi's shouldn't exist are rising to providence.
Problem is, these stories never come from the people making the decisions. Those pussies would never put themselves in the position to take the risks that these poor people have to.
We have these stories from every war, every invasion, every genocide. The people in charge either don't listen, don't care, or are motivated by these stories.
Humanity somehow let the least human people run the government and lead the armies.
Don't hold your breath. When today the Internet shames anyone for being anti-fascism, there's no hope. Human beings are fucking rotten.
We have done this in Germany for 70 years and now we have the new Nazi party in polls at about 40%.
Remembering war crimes is useless until the politics act for the broader main of people, otherwise they will start voting for the bigges assholes available (see Trump in the USA).
We have the stories, world leaders don't give a fuck
What a sense of dignity and courage this young man possesses. What a strong and gentle demeanor, to put everyone to tears. Wish I could have heard everything he had to say
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Thank you for linking an article with a video of the entire deposition.
Going to have to watch this evening. Can’t get misty-eyed at work.
Thank you!
Might be two special bots. Thanks for sharing.
I will point out that votes are fuzzed as the volume increases, you may well have zero downvotes.
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Strong, or traumatized and dissociated..
I hope he gets all the help he needs.
Yeah you're probably right
I understand you used the term “man” in your comment out of respect for the courage and maturity they've shown in speaking about this issue. Still, I think we need to be careful with the words we use when talking about this atrocity to avoid misrepresenting it.
This person is not a man, but a child. A boy. A kid. They are not an adult or any related term in any sense, and it's important not to lose that distinction because it highlights the extent to which what is currently happening in Ukraine is not just bad or wrong, but evil. The actions of the Russian government and their soldiers are vile beyond measure because they target our most vulnerable. People who should be sheltered and protected, not because they can’t face the world and its cruelty, but because they shouldn't have to.
Again, this isn't a callout of the original commenter or a claim that they're wrong for wanting to express respect for this brave individual. It's simply a comment on how the words we use when speaking of events shape our memories of those events, and we cannot allow ourselves to forget or efface the fact that the Russian government is actively killing and maiming Ukrainian children as a matter of policy, not accident.
Ignore the other guy, it is an important distinction. This kids been through some real hellish shit and it had made him mature beyond his years (I am willing to bet), but he is still a child, forever traumatized by something utterly pointless.
Awareness is a good thing to have and you have it.
I once heard someone say something akin to:
"There's nothing more sad than a child aged beyond their years".
And that is of course because the reason for that is pretty much never good, often terrible.
Thank you for this comment. Why this distinction is necessary becomes very clear when you think about it, but I needed a reminder again of that it exists in the first place. It's wild how easily you forget these kind of things. Reminders like that are important, no matter how "obvious" the content, because like you said, we get used to certain types of wording over time... but we cannot forget the realities behind them.
He is a child robbed of his childhood
My son is the same age as this boy who was made to grow up entirely too soon. Makes me sick. He has the composure of an adult up there.
This is what should be on the news.
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It was on portuguese main news channels. should be on again later tonight at prime time
Mainstream news media is absolutely garbage
Real news and real journalists are elsewhere these days
Heartbreaking stuff, poor kid man
Simply awful, his whole life torn apart and for what?
For a monster who is near the end of his life.
I really dont get why all these wealthy old men dont just retire on a beach somewhere and enjoy their wealth until they die since they're so close to the end.
Well, Putin specifically would likely be arrested the instant he set foot in most countries with beaches due to the ICC warrants. So I imagine he is keen on avoiding that.
To stroke the ego of a dangerous, insecure sociopath. Men like him are ruining the world.
People like Putin sit in their billion dollar mansions while destroying the lives of innocent people.
Fuck him and everyone like him.
This isn't all on Putin. He has many, many willing helpers.
Yes. I was so disgusted by all the "don't blame the soldiers, blame Putin!" talk early on. Those soldiers were the ones out there murdering and gang raping civilians, and mutilating children. Those soldiers and their families who support them back home are as much to blame for this as he is.
to inflict this level of devastation and never be on the receiving end is pure evil. A second in this kids shoes Putin Would fold like a towel.
When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.
"Why do they always send the poor? Why do they always send the poor? WHY DO THEY ALWAYS SEND THE POOR?" 🎵
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with a fucking pineapple.
I see you are a little Nicky fan.
Fuck Putin in particular and everyone who supports him.
And every country allowing them to continue this war (every single damn one, except maybe the countries that don't have enough influence and power to intercede).
Fuck Trump for supporting them.
"Wouldn't it be great if wars could be fought just by the assholes who started them?"
Meanwhile Trump:
Lack of empathy is a diagnostic trait for a couple personality disorders that Trump is often armchair diagnosed with. So this would track.
Just a reminder, USA have not donated a single $ since January 2025. The USA weapons right now going to Ukraine is purchased by Ukraine and Europe.
Source: https://www.kielinstitut.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/
Most interpreters have seen some shit so when they're overcome by emotion you know things just got real
Context:
11-year-old Roman Oleksiv, who survived the Russian missile attack on Vinnytsia, spoke at the European Parliament during a documentary screening about Ukrainian children. He shared the story of losing his mother in the attack. The boy survived severe burns through 36 surgeries and long rehabilitation.
His story moved the translator to tears as she interpreted his words for the audience. Despite everything, Roman continues to study, dance, and make music, inspiring others with his message: “Never give up. Together, we are strong.”
Most people don't know this, but russia forcibly kidnapped around 20 THOUSAND children from orphanages in Ukraine. They were spread around the country to lose tracks, some were sent to military camps.
Twenty. Thousand. Stolen. Kids. That are now being indoctrinated to hate their homeland or even make them forget where they are from. Oh and I should mention those are identified kids that we know of, the real numbers are probably way more sad
And then people online are surprised why we hate them this much
edit: there's a huge wikipedia article about it and I link wiki because ruski bots are in full force here and wiki has a lot of outside links including OSCE. Obviously most reporting on the issue would be from Ukraine but since you can't 'trust' ukrainian sources here's a plethora of others or you can just google it yourself.
This is literally what Nazis were doing during WW2. If some children had traits of their "race", they kidnapped them to the Reich.
Usually I don’t like to comment on these things because I’m russian but you’ve drawn a right parallel and I have something to share with you.
So for quite some years now kids in schools and students im universities were subjected to basically “patriotism lessons” which was dumb but a little funny. But now they’re hanging banners with phrases like “everyone is an enemy of russia and they want to destroy us with their liberties and tolerance” or… “The future is given in struggle and our struggle is one of good versus evil” My struggle my ass, fuckers spent last 20 years telling me that Hitler was fucking evil and for what
This is literally a form of genocide. If I remember right version C described in part III of the convention on genocide
Holly fuck this is beyond dark….. my country “leaders” are disgusting.
I will spread this article, best i can do sorry…. Thats… really dark….
Obviously news here doesn’t tell anything. At all, seriously. All you can hear on news is whining about drones, how Zelenski is bad and how Trump with Putin is good… and some people believe all that!
I knew we are the bad guys but fuck… it’s horrific… I need to think about that…. Again thanks for info.
Not just orphanages! There were many cases where the schools would tell parents that they could send their kids to summer camps for safety from bombing, a place they could be kids again, that it was involved with the schools, that would come back. Then their children were sent away further and further into Russia.
Dont get sad, get angry. Do something, help them.
I don't blame the translator. That's a difficult thing to hear from a young kid. But it's so important the world hears it so we fully understand the war atrocities going on around the world.
I do interpreting like this, it's a real art not to show emotion when you are translating something intense, there are tricks but they don't always work.
I hope God exists and that Putin will burn in the fire of Hell for eternity
Nah, he needs to burn right now. Alive. And then the hellfire
Upvoting before you get put in Reddit jail
I got out of reddit jail today 😂 said some not so nice words about the state of American politics
I hope god doesn't exist. Because if he does. What kind of god would he be if he let things like that happen
i dont care if he does or not. i just want consequences for people that do shitty things, especially the shittiest things that humanity can and cant even think of
it's up to other humans lol, not some imaginary powers
He doesn’t. If we don’t met out the justice ourselves (humanity), That man will die peacefully in his sleep never facing any consequences for the evil he is inflicting upon the world.
Heartbreaking 😞
Damn that kid went through hell
Power to him for having the courage to speak about his experiences
As an interpreter myself, I thought I could keep my emotions in check; but when it comes to babies and children, the faucet is ON. The lingering sadness and guilt really messed me up.
Same, I was just interpreting this week, this guy was telling some tough stuff from his life, and it's super hard keeping it together. I have a trick where I tense up my abs and the effort seems to take my focus off the emotions, but it doesn't always work 100%.
Same. I only did it for a short time, but when it comes to kids, that hits you hard.
A murdered teen. A girl who'd been groomed. Kids in a precarious situation and CPS unable to remove them.
I know my voice cracked. As soon as those conversations were over, I clocked out and just cried.
Justice for Ukrainian and Palestinan children.
And Sudanese as well!
Amen. Fuck those who are killing children and innocent people.
...but RSF are sponsored by UAE so united nations and the entirety of western media will keep their tongues shoved up their asses about mass slaughters of indigenous population in Sudan done by arab colonizers going on for 15 years
And thats how you breed generational hate, folks.
And to think Russia believes they are right to do so...
Sad as fuck
This kid has infinitely more courage than I do.
If Putin was assassinated, no one would be sad.
And Trump now wants to reward these cruel tyrants by investing in them
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-plans-envision-major-us-investment-russia-restoring-oil-flows-europe-wsj-2025-12-11/
and the fact that people here in hungary are defending these russian psychopaths its just crazy….
https://preview.redd.it/47ktzd5rsn6g1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec3fce91543cd74bb2352cd110f2526899ae5815
And this d bag enables them 👆
This is what Trump and his supporters are perfectly okay with.
They maimed this child so badly, that I thought he was a grown man in bad makeup. I hope the oligarchs get burnt to a crisp over this dogshit "military operation."
Mostly, this is all hidden and reported on late at night when anyone it might influence to support Ukraine is asleep. By design. Personalizing this war is at the top of the list of things the right DO NOT want.
It hurts my heart and boils my blood that the president of the United States is getting in bed with the monsters who did this to this boy and the many thousands of other kids and their families...
As an American, regardless of what our Commander and Chief says, I have and always will stand with Ukraine.
I wish my president was more concerned with stopping dictators than appeasing them just so he can get a good business deal.
It’s not about business deals, it’s about what he perceives as power and staying out of jail.
That's a big wish of a man who wants to be a dictator.
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JESUS CHRIST
Resilient Young Boy
The people crying don't deserve to cry, and those who don't, deserve to.
Thats enough Reddit for today.
Only because I need to process this properly and not just doom scroll.
What the fuck are we doing as a species.
Russia and Israel are two very evil countries
A country isn't evil, actions and ideas are, a "good" country can still have evil actions happen inside it and vice-versa
Gaza was flattened and 20k kids killed. But Reddit gonna argue that Israel did the right thing.
and USA
Only the dead have seen the end of war
https://phr.org/news/brutal-milestone-2000-attacks-on-ukraines-hospitals-clinicians-and-health-infrastructure-since-russias-full-scale-invasion/
1059 bombings on Hospitals in Ukraine as of this publication ^ (July 2025)
There is no excuse for the attacks Putin ordered on Ukraine. None.
The monsters doing this is who Trump and others are willing to give Ukrainian territories to, let that sink in.
I wish Trump could experience the boy's pain and damage.
And you have absolute clueless morons or bots saying "Ukraine should surrender to end the war and killing".
What do you think the Russians do if they surrender. Rebuild the schools and hospital's they targeted?
Putin and his men must burn for this
This is heart breaking.
Man...This is heartbreaking!💔 I feel for the boy and for all the innocent people whose lives were shattered by the war!!
Yeah.. fuck Russia immediately, with every Euro and bullet of support we can muster!
T_T everyone cries yet nobody has balls to do anything that actually stops this. Let’s keep on listening to trump and being concerned, amiright? Year after year for more than a decade this shit happens to my country and all I see is this kind of charade
Hey, West. If you're scared of nuclear weapons from a coward and fascist nation more than a world, where a children have to endure all this and suffer like this kid, I have a news for you. Y'all have no spine. And that's cruel.
Large scale war is coming isn't it... And there's nothing any of us can do or say to stop it.
I wonder if the damage we cause this time will even be possible to repair.
Edit: replies all seem to concentrate on Russia, there's far more to this current geopolitical landscape than Russia alone.
The level of narcissism one must have, to be responsible for the harming of others, especially children, and to be able to sleep at night, is astounding. All of the Putins, Trumps, Netanyahu's, and others of that ilk need to be held accountable before they die of old age, or in Trump's case, Alzheimers.
russia is a war criminal state
Remember, Putin started this war, taking advantage of Ukraine's lack of nuclear weapons. Ukraine gave away their weapons under Russia's promise of never attacking them.
Fuck Dobby and his love of war
The New Yorker has a short documentary about the translators from the Yugoslavia post-war trials (ICTY). Being part of a trial has a longtime effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JppVGKykkvc
The courage and humanity is deeply touching. The way she tries to get the words out, knowing what they are, but unable to produce… it’s heartbreaking.
What a strong child!
I wish nothing but death to Putin and any pro war Russian.
Very interesting and touching. But the sad piano music makes me feel manipulated. Why not leave it without music?
Absolutely heartbreaking
To protect our future we need to understand and recognise the mistakes of the past. Putin and the appeasement of him by agent Trump is one of the most terrifying things I have had to witness. As a Brit it is clear that the two of them are looking to carve up Europe.